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…