Yema Trailer (2013)
Trailer for Yema. Although the Algerian Civil War between the government and Islamist fundamentalist rebels that began in 1991 officially ended in 2002, that country remains torn by ongoing strife, a situation brought home by writer/director Djamila Sahraoui in her beautifully shot and powerfully conveyed drama. Sahraoui focuses on the classically themed brother-against-brother tragedy that befalls one family to make damning statements about the heartbreaking conflict as a whole. Ouardia (played by Sahraoui herself) prepares to bury her elder son Tarek, a government soldier killed by his own brother, fundamentalist Ali, in the remote Algerian countryside. Subsisting in a drought-stricken region and watched over by a one-handed guard sent by Ali, Ouardia obsessively tends to her garden, a source of food, of course, but also a metaphor for the possibility of hope in a seemingly hopeless world. Ali, grievously injured, returns home and Ouardia is caught between the memory of her dead son and the reality of the one still alive, his brother’s killer…