Oran, de tweede pest

In 1991, the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) won the first round of the parliamentary elections in Algeria. But the military declared the voting void and the FIS was banned. Since then, the country has experienced a wave of terror. In the meantime, the situation may have slightly improved, but murders and attacks are still the order of the day. In this film, we see how the inhabitants of the city of Oran survive amidst hatred and threats, how they protect themselves against terrorists with armed patriotic groups and how they, despite all this, draw strength from art. Rai music, banned contemporary Arab pop music, is still immensely popular and plays an important role. The story is interwoven with quotes from Albert Camus’ ‘La peste’, the novel from 1947 that describes an epidemic of plague in Oran, which at the time was meant as a metaphor for Nazism.