Merzak Allouache

Merzak Allouache (born 6 October 1940) is an Algerian film director and screenwriter. His 1976 film Omar Gatlato was later entered into the 10th Moscow International Film Festival where it won the Silver Prize. His 1996 Salut cousin! was submitted to the 69th Academy Awards in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. He is one of the most influential Algerian filmmakers, considered by some to be the most important. He is the only Algerian filmmaker who devoted most, if not all, of his cinematic work to his native country.

Early life Merzak Allouache was born in the Algiers neighborhood of Bab el-Oued. His father was a Kabyle Berber postal worker and his mother was an Algerian housewife from Casbah.

News career Returning to Algeria, he spent a few months at the Algerian News Office and then was dismissed, along with his colleagues from the Institute for Cinema’s graduating class after a petition demanding more responsibility for the workers. To calm the protest, the group of alumni of the Institute for Cinema including Allouache was sent to France for a three-month internship at the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF). He remained in France for several years and enrolled at the École pratique des hautes études with Marc Ferro and took the course "Analysis of 20th century film documents".

Film career Allouache returned to Algeria in 1973 and worked on organizing CinéBus campaigns in support of the agrarian revolution. He worked as an advisor for the Ministry of Culture. In 1974, he co-directed for the Office National pour le Commerce et l'Industrie Cinématographique (ONCIC) Tipasa l'ancienne, a documentary on the site of Tipasa, in co-production with FR3 Marseille. Before joining ONCIC as a director in 1975, he was assistant director on Le Vent du Sud directed by Mohamed Slim Riad, also in 1974. Then he directed Les Aventures d'un héros in 1978, a film about an Algerian father who falsely labels his infant son as the hero his tribe has been waiting for, which received the Thanit d'or at the Carthage Film Festival, and directed L'Homme qui regardait les fenêtres in 1982.

Allouache returned to France and wrote a screenplay for TF1, Parlez après le signal sonore, and, in 1987, directed a feature film Un amour à Paris, a love story about two Algerians: a model and an ex-con, screened in the Perspectives of French Cinema section at the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Perspectives of French Cinema Prize.

He returned to Algeria in 1988 in the aftermath of the October riots. After directing a series of films and TV movies, he returned to Algeria in 1999.

Since 2000, Allouache has alternated his productions or co-productions between Algeria and France, where he lives. In 2003, he directed Chouchou, starring Gad Elmaleh, about a Maghrebi transgender woman who settles in Paris to find her nephew. He directed Bab el-Web in 2004, a comedy about the effects of the internet on Algerian youth. This film was partially funded by French sources, with the stipulation that at least fifty-one percent of the dialogue be recorded in French, despite the fact that all of the characters were Algerian. This film was a commentary on the Algerian government’s amnesty policy for terrorists. It won a FIPRESCI Award at the 17th International Film Festival of Kerala. In 2013 Les terrasses (The Rooftops) about life in Bab el-Oued, was screened at the Venice Film Festival and in 2015 Madame courage, about a drug-user who tries to kick his habit, was screened at the Venice Film Festival. In 2016 a documentary fiction Enquête au paradis, which combines in-person interviews with a dramatized road trip was screened at the FIPA in Biarritz (Fipa d'or) at the Berlin Film Festival, and in 2017 Vent divin was screened at the Toronto Film Festival.

Awards His 2011 film Normal! won the award for Best Film at the 2011 Doha Tribeca Film Festival. In 2012, his film The Repentant was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. It won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Asian Film at the 17th International Film Festival of Kerala.

Personal life Allouache has one daughter, Bahia Allouache, who is also a filmmaker.

Selected filmography

Omar Gatlato - 1976 Adventures of a Hero (Mughamarat batal) - 1979 L'Homme qui regardait les fenêtres - 1986 Un amour à Paris - 1987 L'Après-Octobre - 1989 Bab El-Oued City - 1994 Lumière and Company (Lumière et compagnie) - 1995 Dans la décapotable - 1996 Hi Cousin! (Salut cousin!) - 1996 Algiers-Beirut: A Souvenir (Alger-Beyrouth: Pour mémoire) - 1998, TV À bicyclette - 2001, TV The Other World (L'Autre monde) - 2001 Chouchou - 2003 Bab el web - 2005 Tamanrasset - 2008, TV Harragas - 2009 Normal! - 2011 Tata Bakhta - 2011 The Repentant (El taaib) - 2012 La baie d'Alger - 2012 The Rooftops (Es-Stouh) - 2013 Madame Courage - 2015 Investigating Paradise (Enquête au paradis) - 2017 Divine Wind (Rih rabani) - 2018 La Famille - 2021