REVIEW: ROQIA

| REVIEW | Ryan Morrissey-Smith

• Director: Yanis Koussim
• Writer: Yanis Koussim
• Stars: Ali Namous, Melissa Benyahia, Dounia Chaoui, Lahcen Chiba, Abdelkrim Derradji, Mostefa Djadjam, Aydan Hammache

Roqia opens ominously. In the darkness a large group of guerrillas raid a neighbourhood in the night, the families are terrorised in their homes, the neighbourhood people, the men, the women and even the children are dragged out into the street to await their fate. This is Algeria in 1993 and the early stages of the civil war known as the Black Decade, when various groups slaughtered and murdered Algerians.

There are two storylines which come together, the first one is – After a 1993 crash, amnesiac Ahmed returns home bandaged. His child fears him, and nightly visitors speak in strange tongues. His neighbor makes him uncomfortable, leaving him questioning everything. What happened to Ahmed in 1993 directly effects the present day…

Writer/Director Yanis Koussim’s film unfolds across two time spaces (1993 and the present day) with both the past and present meeting and marrying up. In the present, the ageing sheikh Raqi (Djadjam) – known as ‘El Hadj’ by those he treats – has spent decades performing exorcisms, even performing one on the neighbour Waffa (Mansour), who is now pregnant. Raqi is rapidly losing his memory to Alzheimer’s. His disciple (Djeghim), begins to fear there may be a link between Raqi’s decline and the surge of awful, brutal violence spreading through the community. There is a papable sense of dread, an impending catastrophe that almost feels planned.

Cinematographer J.M Delorme has shot a dark, shadowy film and it looks great, blacks and dark blues being prominent on the palette.

Koussim’s film isn’t big on scares but he uses the dread created to great effect. A small film that is handled perfectly by Koussim who uses his obvious skill to guide the story along. The films denouement creeps up on the audience and when it is fully realised just what is going on, it becames a very disturbing story. Koussim uses this story to decry senseless violence but also hits on many other issues, too numerous to mention them all.

Whilst Koussim’s film doesn’t always neatly bring both storylines together but he has managed to make a compelling, disturbing and above all excellent film.

Playing as part of the Muslim International Film Festival MIFF.