Opium and the Stick

Sep 14, 1970

2h 17m

★ 7.8

Overview

In 1950, in Algeria, in a village in Kabylia, Algerian resistance fighters resisted the French occupation army. Bachir returns to the village to escape the clashes ravaging Algiers. In Thala, he has two brothers, Ali and Belaïd. The first is engaged with the ALN (The National Liberation Army) and fights against the colonizer. His second brother, Belaïd, the eldest, is convinced of a French Algeria. His family torn apart, Bachir decides to join the war and takes sides against the repression of the French army. The French army is trying in vain to turn the population against the insurgents by using disinformation. The more time passes, the more the inhabitants of the village and surrounding areas, oppressed, rally to the cause of the FLN, their houses and their fields will be burned... Adaptation to the cinema of the eponymous novel Opium and the Stick, published in 1965, by Mouloud Mammeri, the film was dubbed into Tamazight (Berber), a first for Algerian cinema.

Genres

Action

Drama

War

Production Companies

Office National pour le Commerce et l'Industrie Cinématographique (ONCIC)

Opium and the Stick Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Ali

Sid Ali Kouiret

Farroudja

Marie-José Nat

Lazrak

Mustapha Kateb

Tayeb

Rouiched

Chaudier

Jean-Louis Trintignant

Omar

Brahim Hadjadj

Abdelhalim Rais

Larbi Zekkal

Mahieddine Bachtarzi

Djelloul Bachdjarah

Kaci Ksentini

Ahmed Kadri (Krikèche)

Omar, better known as Omar the Strawberry, is an old-fashioned bandit. Forced to flee to Algeria, he makes a living out of petty crime, accompanied by his famous sidekick Roger. After decades of ruling the French criminal underworld, they must come to terms with their new life together, which until now has been one of debauchery and violence.

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