Karima, a Parisian photographer, visits Algiers after her patriarch falls ill. Her return unveils buried memories and conflicts. She navigates her roots and unresolved matters in the city she once cherished.

Perfumes of Algiers

Once upon a time there were twelve children who were born the same day in the village of Timgad in Algeria, eleven boys and a girl, Naïma, the grocer's daughter. Over a decade later, they were all in the same class under the iron rule of Mokhtar, the secular schoolmaster. They also all played in the village soccer team founded by - Mokhtar. All, except Naïma, although she was itching to. But the families were poor and without decent shoes and worse, without a competent coach, the kids lost most of their games, particularly against Batna, their main rival. One day, Jamel, a young French-Algerian archaeologist from Marseilles, landed in the remote village. And he was not that bad at soccer.

Timgad

Jacqueline Gozlan - who left Algeria with her parents in 1961 - nostalgically retraces the history of the Algiers Cinematheque, inseparable from that of the country's Independence, through film extracts and numerous testimonies; notably that of one of its creators, Jean-Michel Arnold, but also of filmmakers such as Merzak Allouache and critics such as Jean Douchet. A place of life for Algerians, the Cinémathèque was the hub of African cinemas. Created in 1965 by Ahmed Hocine, Mahieddine Moussaoui and Jean-Michel Arnold, the Cinémathèque benefited from the excitement of Independence. The Cinematheque becomes a meeting place for Algiers society, future filmmakers find their best school there. In 1969, the Algiers Pan-African Festival brought together all African filmmakers, and from 1970, Boudjemâa Kareche developed a collection of Arab and African films.