Algeria, France, Arabic - 90 min
Feature Narrative
TOTAL BUDGET
US $1,400,000
CONFIRMED FINANCING
US $100,000
CONTACT
f.ladjimi@1001productions.net
faresladj@gmail.com
+330633557436
In 1993, Ahmed became amnesiac after a car crash. In 2020, an old raqi suffers from Alzheimer's. While Ahmed is afraid of recovering his memory, the raqi fears that the loss of his will cause the return of an ancient evil.
In 1993 in Algeria, 35-year-old Ahmed became amnesiac after a car crash. With his face hidden under thick medical bandages, he returns to his village located on the Mitidja plain, where nothing seems familiar to him. Selma, his 28-year-old wife, does everything she can to help him remember their past. His children are confused, with the youngest— 4-year-old Islam—being terrified by the bandages that hide his father's face.
Then there are the militaries, who arrive unannounced one morning to pick him up for an interrogation. There are also the invisible visitors who come in the middle of the night to chant around litanies in an unknown language.
In 2020, we see an 80-year-old Muslim exorcist (raqi), and a 45-year-old man who travels across the country to fight a demon where it hides. The old exorcist has been suffering blackouts during his roqias—the exorcism sessions—because of the early stages of his Alzheimer's disease.
As the story progresses, the links between past and present become more and more obvious. Both Ahmed and the raqi have their right index fingers cut off, and the language of the litanies chanted by the night visitors in 1993 is the same one in which the possessed express themselves, being exorcised in the present.
While Ahmed struggles to recover his memory, fearing to discover who he really was, the disciple fears that the old raqi might lose his.
Concerning horror movies, King writes: “Horror is, in many ways, an optimistic and positive experience. It most often allows our subconscious to deal with problems that exist not only in the supernatural realm, but that are present in our daily lives.”
Horror films are nightmares that help exorcise our fears; the fear of communists during the 50s in America as shown in Invasion of the Body Snatchers; the fear of Nazism in Nosferatu’s 30s Germany. These two films, like many others, express the fears of a given era and its society through fiction. Roqia is about my own fears as an Algerian, and the fears of the society in which I live.
I have been working with the same director of photography for almost 15 years, and from one film to the other, we try to go further in both technical and aesthetic aspects to recreate reality on screen as faithfully as possible. That is how I want Roqia: realistic! A sudden burst of fear at the end of a long, moving, handheld take; or horror off-camera, just out of sight, subtly indicated by sounds and noises that will be as realistic as the image, with a few exceptions. In two scenes, the sound will even be more important than the image, because it will allow us to follow the action.
My ambition with Roqia is to make a horror film that includes all the codes of the genre, with the requirement and radicalism and the bias of a “film d’auteur.”
I have the pleasure to present Roqia, which will be Yanis Koussim’s second feature film. I met Yanis years ago when he was developing his first feature, Algiers by Night. Even though we didn’t make that film together, we promised ourselves that, one day, we will find a project to collaborate on.
With this script, Yanis touches on universal and fascinating themes such as memory, trauma, losses, and lost illusions. A nightmarish situation that is naturally part of the framework of a genre film, which seems the most suitable for depicting—as accurately as possible—the reality of those who dreamt of freedom. Yanis hereby stakes that cinema is at the service of formal liberty: not to be locked within the codes of conventional filmmaking, not hesitating to use the genre to draw interest, and even complicity with the audience throughout the action. Behind each film, there is always a strange driving force, and the dynamic behind this project is compelling.
My work as a producer is the same as I've undertaken in the past. Producing, and accompanying the author so he can express himself, so that he can go beyond himself and transcend the constraints of the genre, in order to deliver a film that might be a milestone, I hope.
2020: L'état sauvage
2017: Brutti e cattivi
2017: A nous de jouer
2017: Ciel rouge
2016: Merci patron!
2014: Les chèvres de ma mère
2013: Nos héros sont morts ce soir
2013: Nesma
2013: El premio
2013: The Lebanese Rocket Society
2011: Ma compagne de nuit
2010: Le fil
2010: La robe du soir
2008: Je veux voir
2008: Andalucia
2006: De particulier à particulier
2006: A Perfect Day
2005: Le cauchemar de Darwin
2002: L’afrance
1999: Autour de la maison rose