NAR
52 minutes, 2019
Director : Meriem ACHOUR-BOUAKKAZ (Algeria)
Production : Afkar Films (Canada)
“Nar” explores a form of extreme violence in Algeria – self-immolation – an act which the film tries to understand through the testimonies of survivors and families bereaved by the loss of a brother or a son who chose fire as a way of expressing his despair. To kill time the young take refuge in cafés, or in sports stadiums where they shout out their rage to live. Feeling confined, constrained, all of them nourish the same dream: “harga”, to leave the country clandestinely. But what seems to them to be their only hope is actually just another form of suicide.
A veterinary medicine graduate, Meriem ACHOUR-BOUAKKAZ is an Algerian film-maker working in Montreal since 2011. She did a course in making documentaries at Montreal’s Institut National de l’Image et du Son (INIS).
She has two films to her credit: “Harguine harguine” (2008) about young people who want at any cost to leave the country, risking their own lives, and she has co-directed “Nous dehors” which looks at women’s lives and conditions through what they live in public.