C'était Votre Terre

Regarding the relationship between France and Algeria, many stories still need to be told... How could colonists have thought and even declared: "This is our land"? Adapting a novel by Mathieu Belezi, Célie Pauthe stages a family saga spanning several generations to examine the past and confront history head-on.

Beyond the silences and poorly healed wounds caused by one hundred and thirty-two years of French colonisation, C'était notre terre traces the destiny of a family of wealthy colonists and their Kabyle nanny, caught up in the Algerian War of Independence. Célie Pauthe embraces Mathieu Belezi's baroque writing, where the tragic constantly rubs shoulders with the grotesque and the lyrical with the trivial, giving voice to the clashing points of view.

For the director: "It is the very madness of any colonial system that is expressed here, through voices that are alive, vibrant, and incantatory."