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Opium and the Stick (1970)

Opium and the Stick (1970)

Action Drama War
Release Date: 1970, September 14
Directors: Ahmed Rachedi
Countries: Algeria
Production: Office National pour le Commerce et l'Industrie Cinématographique (ONCIC)
Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Marie-José Nat, Jean-Claude Bercq, Brahim Hadjadj, Sid Ali Kouiret, Rouiched, Mustapha Kateb

Overview:

In 1950, in Algeria, in a village in Kabylia, Algerian resistance fighters resisted the French occupation army. Bachir returns to the village to escape the clashes ravaging Algiers. In Thala, he has two brothers, Ali and Belaïd. The first is engaged with the ALN (The National Liberation Army) and fights against the colonizer. His second brother, Belaïd, the eldest, is convinced of a French Algeria. His family torn apart, Bachir decides to join the war and takes sides against the repression of the French army. The French army is trying in vain to turn the population against the insurgents by using disinformation. The more time passes, the more the inhabitants of the village and surrounding areas, oppressed, rally to the cause of the FLN, their houses and their fields will be burned... Adaptation to the cinema of the eponymous novel Opium and the Stick, published in 1965, by Mouloud Mammeri, the film was dubbed into Tamazight (Berber), a first for Algerian cinema.

Keywords:

africa colonialism freedom fighters algeria algerian war (1954-62) djazair liberation war maghreb decolonization guerilla algerian fighters