Fidai

Synopsis

In Arabic, ‘fidaï’ means ‘one who dedicates his life to a cause’. This documentary looks at one such selfless fighter, whose actions during the Algerian War helped throw off more than a century of colonial rule. Now 70, director Damien Ounouri’s great-uncle El Hadi was a warrior in Algeria’s National Liberation Front. Here, he remembers some of his own acts of armed resistance during the bloody revolution, bringing a humble and human dimension to events that contributed to this most important and inspiring war of decolonisation

Director Biography

Born in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Damien Ounouri is a graduate of the Sorbonne and currently conducts cinema workshops for children and teenagers in both France and Algeria. He has made the short documentaries ‘Changping Sonata’ (2007) and ‘Away From Nedjma’ (2009), and the feature-length documentary ‘Xiao Jia Going Home’ (2008), about Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke, which screened at a dozen festivals.