‘Ali au Pays des Merveilles - Djouhra Abouda & Alain Bonnamy’

In this experimental, political and radical film about the experience of immigrant workers in France in the mid-1970s, Ali au Pays des Merveilles calls out the exploitation and racism it ascribes to the French state, the media, capitalism and colonisation. Shot in 16mm, the film combines a formal and aesthetic inventiveness with a powerful militant purpose, through the direct dialogue of marginalised people.

Born in a village in the Djurdjura mountains in Kabylia (Algeria) in the late 1940s, Djouhra Abouda (1949) arrived in France with her father at the age of five. In the 1980s she founded the Djurdjura group, with whom she produced several music albums before devoting herself to her solo career. In the 1970s, Djouhra Abouda produced and directed three film projects with architect Alain Bonnamy (1947): Algérie couleurs (1970-1972), Cinécité (1973-1974) et Ali au Pays des Merveilles (1975-1976).