Cinema
Le Charbonnier
Mohamed Bouamari · 1972
Synopsis
Belkacem burns charcoal in the forest and sells it at the souk. A former maquis fighter, he sees his trade become useless the day butane reaches the countryside. He goes down to town looking for work and finds none anywhere. While he is away, his wife takes a job at the neighbouring textile factory to support the family. When he comes back, he finds her at work, and everything he thought he knew has to be rethought.
Context
The state office produced this first feature film, shot in the village with performers mostly taken from among the locals. It opens the vein that critics would call djidid cinema, attentive to the contradictions of socialist Algeria rather than to the war. Denise Brahimi notes in it a complicity between the father and the child that recalls De Sica, in a much less sombre tone, and gives the leading moral role to the wife, played by Fettouma Ousliha: she takes a job without hesitation, whereas her husband needs an inner revolution to accept it.
Who it is for
An hour and a half, subtitled, easy to follow: few words, gestures of work, paths. It should be known that it takes sides in the agrarian debate of its time and that it was made to persuade.
Prizes and reception
Silver Tanit at the Carthage Film Days in 1972 and the Georges Sadoul Prize at the Critics' Week at Cannes in 1973; the film that made its author known.