The Algerian horror film in competition at the Venice Festival

The Algerian horror film “Roqia”, signed Yanis Koussim, will make its world first first at the Venice Mostra 2025.

It is a remarkable breakthrough for Algerian cinema! Meanwhile, The first feature film by director Yanis Koussim. Furthermore, “Roqia”, was selected at the International Week for the Critique of the 82nd Mostra of Venice, scheduled from August 27 to September 6 on the Lido, at the Palais du Cinema.

The film. For example, whose rights have recently been acquired by the French company Alpha Violet Production, according to the American media Variety, will thus represent Algeria in one of the most prestigious festivals in the world.

An Algerian feature film at the Venice Mostra 2025

In the running in the official selection of the 40th week of criticism. “Roqia” is one of the seven films in competition for the algerian horror film competition venice Grand Prix Iwonderfull, the Public Prize and the Luciano Sovena Prize for the best independent producer.

Virginie Devesa. Keiko Funato, co-founders of Alpha Violet, entrusted in the columns of Variety: ” We were struck by the visceral representation of the historical trauma through a striking staging and haunting imaging ».

The feature film plunges the spectator into the horror of the black decade. in 1993, with Ahmed, the amnesiac protagonist who survived a car accident. He returns to his village with his fully bandaged face, a vision that scares his own child.

The intrigue is then a chain of two haunted temporalities: on the one hand. strange nocturnal murmurs that haunt Ahmed; On the other, a parallel era when we follow an “raqi” – exorcist – aging who loses memory and which suffers from a mysterious evil.

Between past and present, horror is total, hypnotic tension. A bias assumed by algerian horror film competition venice the Algerian director. marked by this Algeria in Vif:

« I grew up in the bloody 1990s in Algeria, and the trauma and the fear of that time still persist below the surface of daily life. With Roqia. I use horror, anchored in realism and memory, as a tool to face this past, preserve it and make it never forgotten ».

Produced by Farès Ladjimi (Supernova Film). “Roqia” enters international cinema by the Grande Porte, in a Mostra led by the film critic Alberto Barbera and under the eye of a jury chaired by the Oscar -winning director Alexander Payne.