ALFILM Festival: Roqia

In the organizer's words:

Yanis Koussim's debut feature depicts a haunting portrait of present day Algiers, a city still reeling from the fallout of the harrowing violence of the Black Decade (1991 - 2002).

A Raqi (a healer and exorcist in Islam) is called to cast a demon out of the body of a suffering young woman.

Decades later, a man is left disfigured from a mysterious accident causing severe memory loss. These two events, and more seemingly disjointed fatal incidents, slowly begin to reveal the repercussions of generational violence and the interconnectedness of a bloody memory, as the film delves into supernatural phenomena and the metaphysics of colonial legacy.

Premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2025, this psychological thriller is a truly scary feast for the lovers of a horror genre with deep ties in history. (JH)