SYNOPSIS
In Algiers, a writer sets out to map the city through its jacaranda trees, whose purple blossoms arrived from Latin America. Accompanying him, his filmmaker son turns the journey into an intimate portrait of memory and place. As the father’s stories unfold, they form a loving dictionary of the city, while the intertwined perspectives of father and son become a story of inheritance and transmission.
REVIEW
Alea Jacarandas is a powerful documentary about inheritance and familial and artistic bonds, and about how dreams can continue to be nurtured amid the devastation of the past. The director’s father—a journalist, intellectual, essayist, and novelist—is a prominent figure in Algeria’s intellectual community. Yet rather than paying tribute to his reputation, Hassen Ferhani leads us into his father’s inner world and the intimate relationship he maintains with the city and the realities surrounding it.
Reflecting on the jacaranda, a tree native to Latin America but now found throughout Algiers, Ferhani explores the city where he was born and raised. He also portrays those struggling to come to terms with past violence, which has left indelible scars on its streets, corners, and neighborhoods. As an act of resistance, dreaming acquires symbolic force, helping people withstand the brutality of everyday life. Music also assumes a distinct presence through the film’s meticulous sound design and hybrid, voice-driven composition. Structured through interviews, archival footage, and conversations with friends, relatives, and strangers, the film gently urges us to look at the world differently—with affection and wonder, as though encountering it for the first time.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
One day, my father told me he had nearly finished writing his first novel, a book he had carried within him for twenty years—an intricate blend of political and poetic reflections on four decades of Algerian history, wrapped in the guise of a false thriller. I read the manuscript, and it shook me deeply. He also shared his wish to find a publisher.
In reading my father’s manuscript, I realized it held everything I had long wanted to film: the story of Algiers, of our country, of my father, and of us. I began writing a film built around this triptych—author, book, city—seeking to capture hidden neighbourhoods, urban legends, and the soul of a man who refused to leave Algeria even under terrorist threat.
CONTACT
Andana Films | Grégory BÉTEND | gregory@andanafilms.com
