Cinema
The Forgotten Hill
La Colline oubliée
Abderrahmane Bouguermouh · 1996
Synopsis
Tasga, an isolated village on the foothills of the Djurdjura, at the moment when the Second World War is upsetting the world. Mokrane and Menach, students in France, are about to be mobilised; Mouh tends the flocks; Davda the voluptuous and Aazi the graceful, Mokrane's future wife, look for their place. The young people try to break free of the limits that tradition imposes on them, each at a turning point in their life, in a community threatened both by the colonial power and by its own quarrels.
Context
The film adapts the novel by Mouloud Mammeri published in 1952. Written in Berber from 1968, the screenplay was rejected by the reading committee, which the director had warned that the film could only be made in Kabyle; the project came to fruition only in the early nineties, with public funding. The shooting and the release, in Algeria as in France, benefited from a broad movement of solidarity. Rachid Merabtine is credited with the cinematography, Chérif Kheddam with the music, and songs by Taos Amrouche can be heard in it. In Kabyle, the film bears the title Tawrirt yettwattun.
Who it is for
A film in Kabyle with subtitles, adapted from a novel of 1952, constructed as a village chronicle. It helps to know that it follows several young people rather than a single hero.
Prizes and reception
The first fiction feature film shot in Berber; Ciné Banc Essai prize at Montpellier in 1996, audience prize at Vues d'Afrique in 1997, selection at Milan.