The Arab

L'Arabe

Algeria, France, Switzerland | 2026 | 106 min

Language: Arabic, French, Spanish

Subtitles: English

Not for persons under 12

Director(s): Malek Bensmaïl

Script: Malek Bensmaïl, Jacques Fieschi based on the novel "Meursault, contre-enquête" (2013) by Kamel Daoud

Cast: Hiam Abbass, Dali Benssalah, Nabil Asli, Amina Ben Ismaïl, Raphaël Thiéry, Grégoire Monsaingeon, Stéphanie Cosserat

Production: Tita B Productions, Hikayet Films, Imagofilm Lugano

Distribution: Hikayet Films

Thriller | Crime | Drama

Literature History Society Outsiders War Family

Horizons

Screenings:

In 1996, a civil war triggered by the nullification of the Islamic party FIS’s election victory in 1991 is raging in Algeria. A brave journalist, Kamel (Nabil Asli), returns from covering a massacre committed by the Islamists in a local village and encounters an elderly man named Haroun (Ahmed Benaïssa in his final, posthumous role). The man gives Kamel a copy of Albert Camus’ The Stranger (1942) and claims that his brother Moussa (Brahim Derris) was the unnamed “Arab” of the novel.

Shifting intensely between two timelines, The Arab is based on Kamel Daoud’s famous novel The Meursault Investigation (2013). It depicts the lingering ghosts of French colonialism by revisiting Camus’ classic. In the flashbacks, the story stretches from 1942 to the first years of Algerian independence, while the present day creates a dark continuum to that history of violence. The deepest wounds of a nation and historical conflicts gain expression through a haunting family story.

Valtteri Lepistö

Further critical context for Camus’s The Stranger is provided by François Ozon’s The Stranger, also screening at Espoo Ciné.

Updated 2026-07-30 17:30:09 UTC