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PRODUCTION France

Masquerades Algeria’s Oscar hopeful

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Lyes Salem’s Masquerades [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
– an 80% French production to be launched in theatres next Wednesday by Haut et Court – has been attracting a great deal of attention.

After winning two awards at the Namur Festival (Audience Award and Junior Jury Prize) and the Grand Prize at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival, the debut feature by the 35-year-old filmmaker (who won the 2005 Best Short Film César for Cousines) has been selected as the Algerian hopeful for the 2009 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination. Starring the director (who appeared in Paloma Delight [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
), Sarah Reguieg, Mohamed Bouchaïb, Rym Takoucht, Merouane Zmirli and Mourad Khen, Masquerades also received the "Discovery" Label awarded by the UGC network.

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Co-written by the director and Nathalie Saugeon, this comedy about the hypocrisy of social games is set in an Algerian village. Proud and boastful, Mounir (Salem) longs to be recognised for his true worth, but he has one weakness: his sister, whom everyone makes fun of because she suffers from narcolepsy.

One evening, Mounir returns from the town drunk and announces on the village square that a rich foreign businessman has asked for his sister’s hand in marriage. Suddenly, everyone envies him. Blinded by his own lie, he unwittingly changes his family’s destiny.

Salem took his inspiration for this social satire from "the films of Kusturica and certain Italian comedies, including The Scientific Cardplayer and Down and Dirty". The filmmaker describes himself as "a Franco-Algerian director. My mother is French, my father Algerian; they raised me with this dual culture. I was born in Algeria and I’ve lived in Paris since the age of 15”.

Salem continues: “I wanted to make a film that in no way gives rise to victim complexes: a film that denies a certain tendency found here, of only acknowledging North-African films that look at the difficulty of being Algerian".

Produced by Isabelle Madelaine for Dharamsala, Masquerades was made for €1.15m. This included co-production backing from Arte France Cinéma and pre-sales from Canal +.

Haut et Court will release the film on 60-80 screens and international sales are being managed by U Media.

Dharamsala, who produced Gérald Hustache-Mathieu’s acclaimed debut feature, April in Love [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, are currently handling the casting for the same director’s second feature: the noir thriller Poupoupidou (formerly entitled Comme Marilyn).

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(Translated from French)

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