“At the urging of his ex-wife Lila (Sonia Mekkiou), a teacher about to retire, businessman Mourad (Mohamed Djouhri) tries in vain to nag his son into continuing his medical degree, before he himself commits an ignominious act by witnessing a barbaric night-time beating and failing to either get involved or call for help.

This first chapter, which speaks of the heady vestiges of idealism (“I couldn’t help myself”/“when you don’t understand the world, you have to fall back on the strength you have”/“reading the newspaper depresses me: nothing ever changes”) smoothly passes the baton to the second story, an ode to the thwarted passions of youth. Driver Djalil (Mehdi Ramdani) is taking a father to Iskra for the wedding of his daughter, Aïcha (Hania Amar), but on the way a bout of food poisoning leaves the two young people alone for an evening. They soon discover that they already know each other, and once shared a mutual attraction. The third and last section evokes the time of Algeria’s “dirty war” and the shadows it still casts over the present, as Dahman (Hassan Kachach) a radiologist, is confronted with his past in the form of a rape victim (Nadia Kaci) who has given birth to a mute child with no identity.” – Cineuropa