After Papicha, Mounia Meddour returns with Houria

Very hard and very soft, realistic and poetic, Houria is not only a portrait of a woman but of a generation trying to move forward in a society that wants them to be invisible and submissive

Houria, 25, a young dancer, is part of the youth who is thirsty for life and fights for her dreams every day. A cleaning lady by day, she takes part in clandestine bets on ram fights by night. One evening, after winning the final of one of these fights, Houria is brutalized by a pardoned former terrorist. When she wakes up in hospital, nothing is the same. Now unable to dance or speak, her life is shattered. Her disability isolates her from the world and her dream of joining the Algerian National Ballet goes up in smoke. But Houria, meaning "freedom" in Arabic, refuses to give up. In the rehabilitation centre, Houria learns to accept her new body and to love it. She ends up developing a dance project with a community of women damaged by life's accidents and finds a meaning to her life in the repair and sublimation of injured bodies. Together, they will rebuild themselves through dance, communicate in another language and dance to regain their freedom.

Mounia Meddour, the director of Houria, has imagined her main character, played by Lyna Khou¬dri, as a grandiose, tireless heroine, in the image of this Algeria, bruised and tormented but still standing. Although weakened by her disability, she gives up nothing. Her relentlessness in dance becomes a kind of resistance. After being deprived of her voice, Houria becomes the symbol of all those who have been silenced but who have remained standing.

With our partners: The Ink Connection and High Sea Production, Le Pacte, France 2 Cinéma, and Wild Bunch International.