Omar Bekhaled

Set in France in 1961-1962 during the Algerian War, Living in Paradise is a thought-provoking examination of the lives of North African immigrants trying to find a place in the social system of Western Europe.

Abandonnés à la naissance, Joseph et Chloé fuguent sans arrêt pour retrouver leur maison. Chloé ne parle pas et dessine toujours une maison jaune aux volets bleus. Joseph ne veut pas être séparé de sa sœur qui peut, croit-il, retrouver leur maison.Un superbe voyage dans le monde de l'enfance égarée avec des adultes qui cherchent mais ne trouvent pas de solutions.

Ibrahim, a Kurdish refugee, is hired by a French health care mutual which repatriates the bodies of dead Africans to their countries of origin. The day following his employment, he attends his first body recovery in a Paris-area apartment. All of a sudden Ibrahim is plunged into a baffling universe that will make him a modern Charon, the ferryman who,in Greek mythology, carried the souls of the newly deceased to the world of the dead.

The quiet agony of a mother whose daughter grows up to pursue her own life is chronicled in this realistically presented French drama. The Circuit Carole of the title refers to a motorbike racetrack. Jeanne and her 20-year old daughter Marie share a small apartment in a working-class Parisian neighborhood; the two live harmoniously, but the daughter is restless and anxious to set out on her own. Marie then takes a job in a northern suburb and their lives are forever changed. The racetrack is near her work; Marie is enthralled by the racers and their fast machines. Along with her new boyfriend, a racer, Marie begins riding herself. She then moves out of her mother's flat, leaving Jeanne bereft of companionship and a purpose in her life. Her silent, deeply internalized grief eventually drives her completely mad.

A Alger en 1993, alors que debute la guerre civile, les locataires de Mme Osmane doivent subir ses acces d'humeur. Son mari l'a abandonnee et la peur de perdre sa respectabilite la hante. L'ancienne maquisarde de la guerre d'independance s'acharne a controler les faits et gestes de sa maisonnee plutot que de lutter contre ses propres frustrations. Apprenant que sa fille est tombee amoureuse, la perspective de se retrouver seule va pousser cette femme encore tres desirable au paroxysme: le "harem" symbolique de Mme Osmane est sur le point de s'ecrouler.