The director with Algerian roots hit the sore point of the Russian people

The film “King of the Streets” by Elias Belkeddar, which participated in the out-of-competition program of the recent 76th Cannes Film Festival, became one of the rare highlights of the sluggish summer rental in Russia. He talks about a forced change in lifestyle and geography, an attempt to start everything from scratch.

The biography of the young director is stingy. Even foreign sources give a minimum of information. It is known that he is 35 years old, and he is the winner of the “Canal +” award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018. In May, he was nominated with “King of the Streets” for the “Golden Camera” in Cannes as a debutant director. But even before that, there was something to present.

Elias became one of the writers and producers of “Athena” by Romain Gavras, which had a high-profile premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and “My Glory Days” by Antoine de Bury. According to some sources, Belkeddar’s mother is Russian, she worked in the library, and his father is Algerian. Their son was born in Paris and became a French director. It seems that his debut, filmed in his father’s homeland, became a very personal statement: is it possible to return to your historical homeland, where you have either never been or have not been for many years, and start a completely new life?

The main roles were played by the French stars Reda Kateb (“The Prophet”, “Special”), an actor of Algerian origin, a distant relative of the famous writer Yasin Kateb, whose plays are shown in Russia, and the unrecognizable Benoit Magimel, winner of the Cannes Silver Palm, received for “ Pianist” Michael Haneke, the award “Cesar” (“Young Blood”, “Torment on the Islands”).

Mazhimel is 49 years old, he has changed a lot and matured. There is no trace of the former image, but it is good in the new age category. Having received an offer from a novice director, Mazhimel offered to meet for a cup of coffee and discuss everything. He came to the meeting without reading the script, and after a 15-minute conversation, he agreed to participate in the project. He liked the director.

The film tells the story of the gangster Omar (Reda Kateb), who served time in childhood for a cruel “joke”. He presented the teacher with a basket filled with strawberries stuffed with needles. Then everything went on the rise – robberies, attacks. In France, Omar was sentenced to 20 years in prison, from which he flees to his homeland. Together with him, his longtime friend went to Algeria, the same reckless gangster Roger (Benoit Magimel), who voluntarily agreed to temporary immigration, which ended for him in the worst possible way.

When two friends walk through a hot desert, it seems that everything that was filmed in the pavilion against the backdrop of a green screen seems to be untrue, as is often the case now. The breath of hot sand is not felt. But other Algerian landscapes are beautiful: aquamarine sea, luxurious villas. Live and be happy, but for some reason it doesn’t work.

The life of the streets, where gangs of teenagers operate with impunity, is reminiscent of the Russian 90s. The characters and their way of life are comical. Everything is done with irony, indulgently towards the local way of life. But this is not Borat’s tongue-in-cheek journey in Kazakhstan, which the local population, especially officials, took offense at.

Omar does not know how to live like a human being. A criminal background cannot be erased overnight. The path to the former Parisian life is cut off, and the historical homeland is like a foreign land. Here Omar seems to be his own, and everyone strives to remind him of this. And his inner mata does not leave him. The house remained in France. There is everything the most expensive and familiar, but already without it.

One joy – at the confectionery factory, he will meet an independent beauty and production worker Samia (Meryem Amiar), and life will become a little more beautiful. And yet, how to stretch the next twenty years in Algeria is completely incomprehensible.

It would seem like a criminal story, but it so accurately responds to the anxieties of people who are forced to go into the unknown, not necessarily to another country, even to another city, where most often no one is waiting for them. So not only Russians are bad emigrants, as Tarkovsky believed. Not only are they unable to get rid of the ghosts of the past and nostalgia.