Wrapped in nostalgia and love for a time (the 1970s), a place (the Casbah of Algiers), a film (Tahia Ya Didou) and the comic actor (Mohamed Zinet) who directed it, Zinet, Algiers, Happiness is something of a cinephile’s dream. When paired with the recent 35mm restoration of the film that deeply influenced documaker Mohammed Latrèche’s childhood, as it was in El Gouna, it completes a program that will charm festival audiences and offer a glimpse into Zinet’s inventive, if tragically short-lived, career.
This trip back in time to the city of Algiers in the 1970s, with its steep narrow lanes climbing the hillside of the Casbah and children playing noisily in the streets, is set against a background of political unrest that culminated in Algerians fighting French colonialism to obtain their independence as a country. When young Zinet is hired as an assistant and crowd handler on Gillo Pontecorvo’s militantly pro-Algerian classic The Battle of Algiers, which is illustrated by a few exciting moments of a huge angry crowd filling a square, Zinet’s trajectory suddenly clicks for a Western viewer.
Latrèche, who lives in Paris, returned to Algiers in late 2019 to research Zinet’s sole work as a director, Tahia Ya Didou. The one-hour Zinet, Algiers, Happiness, made as Covid took hold of Algeria and health restrictions emptied the streets of the bustling city, is a moving record of this cult and cultural artefact that vanished without a trace for decades, until it was found in the cellar of a film archive.
Noting with sorrow how much the heart of Algiers, the Casbah, has changed since Zinet shot there in 1970, Latrèche remembers the earlier film, which he saw as a child, as a revelation: “I had never perceived my country like this.” He excerpts many of the film’s best scenes in his documentary. Zinet’s vision appears mildly comic and touching in a Chalinesque way, with a bad cop chasing naughty children down a seemingly infinite series of staircases in fast motion, and the emblematic character Momo of the Casbah grinning like a genie from the city’s boardwalks. When he disappears with a camera trick, a little boy with curly red hair, Redouane, appears in his place.
Latrèche spends several scenes in the doc hunting down Redouane: he wants to publicly screen the restored print of Tahia Ya Didou on a big wall in the Casbah, and has made up his mind that it must be Redouane who introduces the film to the audience. But when he finally finds him, now a somber man in his 50s, he is unwilling to even talk about the film – at least until much later, when his bittersweet memories of Zinet, who was his uncle, come flooding out.
Other characters who appear almost casually and, in Nico Peltier and Philippe Ramos’s succinct editing, never outstay their welcome on screen, bring insights into the impact Tahia Ya Didou had on local audiences. The acclaimed archivist Boudjamaa Karéche, who ran the Algerien Cinematheque for thirty years, appears in an older version. Despite having lost his sight, he still passionately talks about the film and its maker, describing how Zinet avoided all the “traps” involved in filmmaking, like financing and writing a script. Shooting on the budget of a tourist documentary commissioned by the mayor, he created a wickedly surreal story set in the Casbah which the authorities never saw fit to release theatrically. It did appear on TV, however, and seems to have become a favorite with Algerian families.
Zinet, who had fought in the war for independence with the National Liberation Front and been wounded, briefly studied theater in East Germany. After the disappointment of Tahia‘s non-release, he moved to Paris and became known as “the Arab in French movies”. In an excerpt from Yves Boisset’s 1975 The Common Man, we see him firing a shotgun at a French tourist in a café: he has recognized the man who tortured him during the war. Sadly, Zinet himself met a tragic end, being confined to a French psychiatric hospital until his death in 1995.
Director, narrator: Mohammed Latrèche
Screenplay: Sid Ahmed, Mohammed Latrèche
Producers: Sabine Jaffrennou, Mohammed Latrèche, Jean-Francois Le Corre, Boualem Ziani
Cinematography: Yanis Kheloufi, Oussama Zouaoui, Yann Seweryn
Editing: Nico Peltier, Philippe Ramos
Sound: Joel Flescher, Abd El-Aziz Latrèche
Production companies: Sb Films, Vivement Lundi
World Sales: Vivement Lundi
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival (Feature Documentary competition)
In French, Arabic
57 minutes
