Daughter of Keltoum

A woman of nineteen sets out from Switzerland. Where she goes is the land she was born in: an isolated Berber settlement in the mountainous desert of Algeria. Who she is looking for is the mother she has never met. The journey is hard and dangerous. The place she arrives at is almost entirely away from the present world; rules and custom still decide things. The woman is caught between the measures of her own life and the measures there. The film neither exalts that difference nor looks down on it. What it brings a person to learn where they came from sits at the centre of the story. Cylia Malki and Baya Belal appear in Mehdi Charef’s hundred and six minute film, a coproduction of Belgium, France and Tunisia, completed in 2001.