Trailer for The Rooftops.
Taking place on a single day and structured by the five calls to prayer that reverberate across Algiers, the film takes us to five different neighborhoods to explore the nation's religious, class, and gender divides as well as the fractious coexistence of its revolutionary past and conservative present. An underhand businessman and his partner, a documentary filmmaker and her crew, a crazy old man who may or may not have fought in the War of Independence, a band practicing for an upcoming gig, an imam and his followers-a complex cross section of lives play out on rooftop terraces from the ramshackle tenements of the Casbah to the upscale high-rises on the glittering Mediterranean. In The Rooftops, Allouache demonstrates both a deep affection for and a critical engagement with the country and its people.