Until The Birds Return (En attendant les hirondelles)

Algeria (2017) Dir. Karim Moussaoui

You cannot escape your past. Being young – by that I mean under 30 – doesn’t exclude you either, having already lived a third of your life. However, fate has a funny way of dragging those things we thought we had forgotten back up again.

Property dealer Mourad (Mohamed Djourhri) visits his ex-wife Lila (Sonia Mekkiou) to try to convince their son Nassim (Zineddine Hamdouche) not to quit his medical studies. On the way home, when Mourad’s car breaks down, he witnesses a man being attacked, but is too scared to call the police. When Nassim is taken to hospital following a motorbike accident, Mourad hears of a patient being beaten into a coma, and panics.

One of Mourad’s workers, Djalil (Mehdi Ramdani) drives his friend Tayeb (Chawki Amari) and his daughters Aïcha (Hania Amar) and Nadjla…