The story of an immigrant woman struggling against old world traditions. Zouina leaves her homeland with her three children to join her husband in France, where he's been living for the past ten years. In a land and culture foreign to her, Zouina struggles against her mother-in-law's tyrannical hand and her husband's distrustful bitterness in an attempt to adjust to her life in exile.
Acting
Fejria Deliba's eyes do the work of ten monologues.
Direction
Benguigui finds poetry in cramped apartments and supermarket aisles.
Writing
Small rebellions hit harder than big speeches.
Director
Yamina Benguigui
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Benguigui based this on her own mother's immigration story, filming in the actual apartment building where she grew up in France.
The mother-in-law's trunk arrival wasn't invented — it's drawn from real practices of elderly Algerian women smuggling themselves to family reunions.
DZ
FR
