APS : Sunday, 31 July 2016
ALGIERS- Ben M’hidi, a feature-length fiction movie dealing with the life, political and militant career of one of the emblematic figures in the struggle for Algeria’s independence, and which is currently shooting, will be released early 2017 to mark the 60th anniversary of his assassination, the film’s director said Saturday in Algiers.
In a lecture entitled “cinema and the project film about Larbi Ben M’hidi,” attended by Minister of Culture, Bachir Derrais said he has finished shooting the film’s abroad section.
Sections of the film were shot in Tunisian studios because of the “need to recreate a setting close to the town of Biskra in the 1930s,” the filmmaker explained.
The crew started filming Ben M’hidi at Villa Sesini, a former detention and torture place run by the colonial army on the heights of Algiers, and which has been listed recently as a national cultural heritage.
Coproduced by the ministry of Mujahideen (liberation war veterans) and the minister of Culture, the movie is based on a screenplay written by Mourad Bourboune, adapted to cinema by filmmaker Abdelkrim Bahloul.
Arrested in February 1957 and tortured by the French colonial army during the battle of Algiers, Ben M’hidi was found dead in his cell a few days after his arrest.
