PAPICHA

Algeria, 1990s. Nedjma, an 18 year-old student passionate about fashion design refuses to let the tragic events of the Algerian Civil War keep her from experiencing a normal life and going out at night with her friend Wassila. As the social climate becomes more conservative, she rejects the new bans set by the radicals and decides to fight for her freedom and independence by putting on a fashion show.
Director Mounia Meddour, who left Algeria as a result of death threats, explained her rousing feature film debut at the Cannes film festival:‘Everything that girls experience (in the film) on the university campus is indeed what everyday life was like for Algerian female students at the end of the 90s. Including me. With fundamentalism on the rise, oppression was all around us…
And the veiled women that come into the girls’ room. These patrols of women in hijab existed. They would come and interrupt classes on a regular basis.’
(Cannes/Presskit)
 

PAPICHA Direction: Mounia Meddour, DCP, OF m. engl. UT, 105 min