Rent Papicha (2019)

Anger in Algiers - Papicha review by PD

A not-too subtle anger runs through the feature debut of Algerian director Mounia Meddour, which centers around Nedjma, a student in an Algiers girls’ university hall of residence in the 1990s, who is determined to put on a fashion show as an act of defiance against the rising Islamist tide: female self-expression being denied both by enemies and so-called friends.

Lyna Khoudriv delivers a fine, fiery performance as Nedjma, and a clever strand is the inventive, pointed way in which clothes and textiles are used as metaphors both for female constraints and female defiance - the sight of Nedjma with pins sticking out of her mouth, transforming a ’haik’ (the traditional Maghrebi women’s robe) into a seductive ball dress, is a particularly telling image. There’s plenty of warmth and good humour alongside the darker notes, but what the film power lies mostly in revealing Nedjma's fury at the way a country she loves is being hijacked by bigots.

There's some rather awkward plot twists, and the last section is all a bit forced and melodramatic, but overall an intriguing, powerful piece of filmaking.

Sewing Machine, Loaded Gun - Papicha review by griggs

There's something quietly dangerous about a sewing machine, and Papicha makes you believe it. Set in Algiera during the civil war of the '90s, it follows Nedjma, a design student who answers rising fundamentalism with an underground fashion show made entirely from the haik — the fabric meant to cover her.

Lyna Khoudri holds the whole thing together, and it's easy to see why she's barely stopped working since. Her defiance feels earned, never performed, and the friendship with Wassila (Shirine Boutella) gives the film its warmth — nights out, in-jokes, the sense of two people who'd go to the wall for each other. That warmth matters, because the threat around them creeps in from every direction: posters on the campus gates, posters inside the corridors, a patrol eventually banging on Nedjma's own door. You only clock the pattern once it's already closed in around her.

What I like is that the film doesn't grind you down evenly. The fun and the fear take turns, and that unpredictability is what gets under your skin.

The nightclubbing and freedom of the opening act give way to something far more inward, all that energy funnelled into the show itself, and a few side characters never get the space they deserve. Mounia Meddour puts Nedjma through the wringer for it, and yet somehow lands her somewhere that feels like defiance, held up and still standing.

Angry, hopeful, and impossible to shake.