She loved so hard she burned a colony down. Messy? Absolutely. Boring? Never.
Recognizing no boundaries to her love, Angele manages to foment riots, rages and tragedy in colonial Algeria. Angele, an Algerian colonist with impeccably French origins, has fallen in love with Said, the assistant in her brother-in-law's bakery shop. Said is conscious of his Arab origins and traditions, and Angele has her work cut out for her if she wants to persuade him to marry her. Once she does, all hell breaks loose, as neither her European-origin peers nor Said's conservative Arab family approve of the union. When word of the proposed marriage gets out, strikes, violence and murder quickly follow, ruining not only Angele's life, but the lives of those around her. Her brother-in-law Paco, meanwhile, has been doggedly trying to get along and raise his family in an increasingly chaotic and difficult situation.
Acting
Clara Bellar's Angele: terrifying, magnetic, utterly unhinged.
Direction
Michel Such captures Algeria's powder-keg atmosphere with claustrophobic precision.
Director
Michel Such
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during France's painful reckoning with Algerian colonial legacy, the film deliberately mirrors the 1990s civil war tensions through its 1950s setting.
Michel Such cast largely unknown actors to avoid star baggage—Bellar's Angele was her breakout, and she reportedly stayed in character so intensely that crew avoided her on set.
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