![\"Filmmakers](\"https:\/\/jazairhope.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/2826c60f876966939a074de1906030ec3eb20451.jpg\" "\\"Filmmakers")
<\/div>\n<\/article>\nDuring the 1992-2002 conflict, which came to be known as the Black Decade, numerous artists and film professionals left the country.<\/p>\n
Cinemas and other entertainment spaces, viewed as places of depravity by Islamists, were shut down one after another.<\/p>\n
It was only in the diaspora, said Bedjaoui, that “filmmakers like Nadir Mokhneche or Rachid Bouchareb filled the void by producing works about Algeria”.<\/p>\n
– ‘Political willingness’ –<\/p>\n
In a cabinet meeting last December, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune announced the creation of a body to oversee cinematic production amid an “emergence of young talents in acting and directing”.<\/p>\n
Bedjaoui said the announcement spoke to the president’s “political willingness and determination to support cinema”.<\/p>\n
But prospects of reviving the industry soon proved to be short-lived.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the Algerian parliament passed a law criminalising films that offend religion, morality, or the history of the 1954-1962 Independence War against France.<\/p>\n In a Facebook post, director Sofia Djama called it “a law of shame”.<\/p>\n “Yesterday the press, today cinema, tomorrow literature, painting, and any form of creation and expression that does not suit them will be censored,” she wrote.<\/p>\n Several journalists and activists are imprisoned in Algeria, which ranks 136 out of 180 countries and territories in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index.<\/p>\n After taking office in December 2019, President Tebboune vowed to “place the film industry at the heart of his programme” by giving it its own state secretariat, said Bachir Derrais, a filmmaker and actor.<\/p>\n But the secretariat was dissolved only a year after its creation, owing to conflicts within the culture ministry, he added.<\/p>\n An example of these tensions is the ban, which lasted for almost six years, on Derrais’ biopic of Larbi Ben M’hidi, the prominent Algerian Independence War leader killed by the French army in 1957.<\/p>\n The film was finally screened in Algeria for the first time on March 4, which marked the 67th anniversary of Ben M’hidi’s killing.<\/p>\n – A new generation –<\/p>\n Amir Bensaifi, 39, is part of a new generation of Algerian filmmakers who say they must go to great lengths to create their films.<\/p>\n “I didn’t have any funding, it’s self-produced,” said Bensaifi of a film he made in 2023, adding that he worked with self-starting “technicians who believed in the project and who are all producers”.<\/p>\n![\"Employees](\"https:\/\/jazairhope.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/c159c94273ed9adffe16eaa9248a4ce5cec41621.jpg\" "\\"Employees")
<\/div>\n<\/article>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/jazairhope.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/afe87d601a665e3628d871b3c2d5b0fd27182421.jpg\" "\\"The")
<\/div>\n<\/article>\n