Daughter of Keltoum (2001)

"A dream-like fusion of what Paul Bowles described as the 'actual desert and the inner desert of the spirit'.  City Pages, Minneapolis

Editor's Note This intriguing film, written and directed by the impressive Mehdi Charef, follows Rallia (Cylia Malki), a 19-year-old Swiss woman who goes looking for her biological mother in a remote Berber region of Algeria.

	Baya Belal
	Cylia Malki
	Fatima Ben Saidane
	Jean-Roger Milo
	Alain Levent - Cinematographer
	Bernardo Sandoval - Original Music By
	Fabienne Servan Schreiber - Producer
	Kenout Peltier - Editor
	Mehdi Charef - Director
	Mehdi Charef - Writer

DVD Times 8 of 10
With the dialogue being so minimal it therefore becomes loaded with meaning and there's a similar situation with the various events; the significance of it all is just too apparent. Furthermore, the neatness doesn't allow the film to breathe quite as it should. Whereas The Circle [Directed by Jafar Panahi] documented the lives of its Iranian women through a La Ronde-style structure so as to emphasise the fact that this is always going on, Keltoum's Daughter never lets us see beyond the film itself. It remains an interesting work nonetheless, but this key difference prevents it from being quite as good as it could be. - Anthony Nield