Film Screening:

The Rooftops / Es-Stouh 

(Merzak Allouache, 2015, 92 min, France/Algeria, in Arabic w/ English subtitles, Color, DCP) 

An overcrowded city, with its endless traffic jams, its chaotic crowd, its rundown buildings, its old apartments piled up with families trying to survive... In this suffocating city, the terraces, progressively transformed into living spaces, they too, over time, become effervescent spaces where smiles cross the hurt, life and death. The Casbah, Bab el Oued, Belcourt, Notre-Dame d'Afrique, Telemly. Five historic neighborhoods of the Algerian capital. Five rooftops beautifully open to the city, the bay, the sea, and the horizon far away. Five stories independent of each other, that mingle and clash in the span of one day. From dawn till night, paced by the five calls to prayer coming from the numerous mosques of the city.  

" Allouache presents a microcosm of Algerian society to expose the nation's sharp class and religious divides, including a metaphoric representation of the country itself that's astonishingly bold even if the symbolism borders on the heavy-handed." - Jay Weissberg, Variety

-- Winner of 9 Film Awards!

Cost: Free and open to the public.

Sponsors: The Africa Initiative, the Department of African and African American Studies (AAAS), the Department of Cultural Anthropology, and the Program in Arts of the Moving Image (AMI).