• A young dancer sees her future disappear after a brutal assault.
  • "Houria" allows Mounia Meddour to direct Lyna Khoudri again who was the heroine of her first film, "Papicha".
  • The painful reconstruction of a wounded woman reveals Algeria today.

They are vibrant with complicity. Actress Lyna Khoudri and director Mounia Meddour team up again for Houria after achieving international success and two César Awards for Papicha. Houria is the name of the heroine of this second feature film, a young Algerian woman, brilliant ballet dancer, whose dreams will be shattered after a brutal attack.



"What interested me was the reconstruction of the character," Mounia Meddour told 20 Minutes. Like Algeria, Houria has enormous potential that must be rediscovered. This work, as powerful as Papicha, offers both a portrait of a wounded young woman who has become mute as a result of trauma and a description of a country handicapped by administrative and political burdens.

A great responsibility

Lyna Khoudri is dazzling in the title role where she expresses all the complexity of her character without being able to use speech. "I consulted a lot of doctors and neurologists to play Houria," she says. I entered this character through the body. I started dancing as soon as I knew we were going to make the film. His choreographies, which evolve throughout the story, express both his anger and his courage. Some dance passages, especially the one at the end of the film, take your breath away.

The two young women do not only have talent in common. They also have a taste for work and perfectionism. "We are hard workers," says Mounia Meddour. This corresponds to our way of functioning but also to the fact that we touch on sensitive subjects such as disability and Algeria which accentuates our sense of responsibility. We sometimes have the impression of being ambassadors of a country that we rarely see in the cinema. »

The importance of solidarity

Sisterhood is central to this powerful narrative of how a group of women support each other to escape difficult fates with as much energy as creativity. "They find a way out in a country where everything can change overnight for better or worse," says Lyna Khoudri. The viewer follows her in her painful and galvanizing evolution. This beautiful film gives hope that the duo will soon meet again for a third collaboration.

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