This is a gritty film about the plight of migrants' children and the present day struggles for those migrating from Africa to Europe. It is a fractured road moving with a pulsing soundtrack that draws a person deep into the belly of experience.
Zano and Naima are lovers and second-generation French/Algerian migrants. We learn that Zano's family fled as political refugees after his paternal grandfather was tortured and murdered in prison. His parents died in a car crash when Zano was a child when they were, ironically, travelling back to visit Algeria. All that he has left is a family violin that he cements into a wall before leaving Paris to head for Algiers. Naima's family are more mysterious and we learn little about them aside from the references to a scar she bears and the pain they caused her. Her behaviour with men is erratic and overly sexual and she speaks of the struggles she has suffered financially. A viewer can infer from these what her childhood and family life may have been.
This couple take to the road to walk and hitchhike to Algiers. They take few belongings with them. The only luxuries are their music sets and headphones. Along their route they befriend an Algerian brother and sister intent on travelling to Paris for studies. They spend a night in the camp of gypsies in Spain and visit flamenco clubs. They work with other African migrants from Morocco, Algeria and West Africa picking fruit and see one of them being taken away as an illegal migrant - the lot of migrants wanting to reach Europe for better lives but who do not meet the punitive visa requirements imposed by said European countries. Zano and Naima meet people smugglers in Morocco, where they travel in error and are helped across the border to Algeria. These people smugglers are kind, do what they are paid to do and have human faces. Throughout people they meet ask them if they are Arab or gypsy and why they do not speak Arabic. Thus underlining the extent of their exile.
Once in Algiers Zano and Naima find their way to the home of the brother and sister they met and deliver a letter written by the sister to her mother and older brother. The letter ensures the care of Zano and Naima as they explore Algiers and try and find their parental roots. For Zano returning to his parents' apartment is enough to bring him home as kindly neighbours who knew his family have kept the apartment almost as it was and have his family's photos too. Naima's return to her roots, and here we discover that the director is concerned with the internal roots as well as external, is more fraught as she is conflicted about her family. She and Zano are taken to a celebration where they feast and listen to traditional music. A wise old woman, a seer, speaks to Naima to help her come back to herself but Naima continues to resist the powerful pull to come home, to Algiers and to her own body.
Gradually the music at the feast becomes more ritualised and a kind of incantation begins that invites frenzied and possessed dancing from the women present whilst others chant and women shrill. The music overtakes Naima and we see her surrender at last to the Algerian within her and Algeria around her.
The film ends with this powerful scene that was shot in a single take. By the end of this scene it is hard to resist the primitive roots within, roots that take me and, I imagine, most people back to a people, their people, whose existence runs contrary to the one I/we currently live. Through the music and the patched meetings between Zano and Naima with others the director Tony Gatlif evokes the many ways in which a person can be exiled. It is possible to read a political polemic from the film and equally it is possible to be touched more intimately by the characters we are introduced to, their dreams and sufferings, a journey home and an amazing soundtrack. At some level all of us that dance to the beat of money rather than the beat of instruments are exiled.
Zano and Naima are lovers and second-generation French/Algerian migrants. We learn that Zano's family fled as political refugees after his paternal grandfather was tortured and murdered in prison. His parents died in a car crash when Zano was a child when they were, ironically, travelling back to visit Algeria. All that he has left is a family violin that he cements into a wall before leaving Paris to head for Algiers. Naima's family are more mysterious and we learn little about them aside from the references to a scar she bears and the pain they caused her. Her behaviour with men is erratic and overly sexual and she speaks of the struggles she has suffered financially. A viewer can infer from these what her childhood and family life may have been.
This couple take to the road to walk and hitchhike to Algiers. They take few belongings with them. The only luxuries are their music sets and headphones. Along their route they befriend an Algerian brother and sister intent on travelling to Paris for studies. They spend a night in the camp of gypsies in Spain and visit flamenco clubs. They work with other African migrants from Morocco, Algeria and West Africa picking fruit and see one of them being taken away as an illegal migrant - the lot of migrants wanting to reach Europe for better lives but who do not meet the punitive visa requirements imposed by said European countries. Zano and Naima meet people smugglers in Morocco, where they travel in error and are helped across the border to Algeria. These people smugglers are kind, do what they are paid to do and have human faces. Throughout people they meet ask them if they are Arab or gypsy and why they do not speak Arabic. Thus underlining the extent of their exile.
Once in Algiers Zano and Naima find their way to the home of the brother and sister they met and deliver a letter written by the sister to her mother and older brother. The letter ensures the care of Zano and Naima as they explore Algiers and try and find their parental roots. For Zano returning to his parents' apartment is enough to bring him home as kindly neighbours who knew his family have kept the apartment almost as it was and have his family's photos too. Naima's return to her roots, and here we discover that the director is concerned with the internal roots as well as external, is more fraught as she is conflicted about her family. She and Zano are taken to a celebration where they feast and listen to traditional music. A wise old woman, a seer, speaks to Naima to help her come back to herself but Naima continues to resist the powerful pull to come home, to Algiers and to her own body.
Gradually the music at the feast becomes more ritualised and a kind of incantation begins that invites frenzied and possessed dancing from the women present whilst others chant and women shrill. The music overtakes Naima and we see her surrender at last to the Algerian within her and Algeria around her.
The film ends with this powerful scene that was shot in a single take. By the end of this scene it is hard to resist the primitive roots within, roots that take me and, I imagine, most people back to a people, their people, whose existence runs contrary to the one I/we currently live. Through the music and the patched meetings between Zano and Naima with others the director Tony Gatlif evokes the many ways in which a person can be exiled. It is possible to read a political polemic from the film and equally it is possible to be touched more intimately by the characters we are introduced to, their dreams and sufferings, a journey home and an amazing soundtrack. At some level all of us that dance to the beat of money rather than the beat of instruments are exiled.