I Still Hide to Smoke

Name: I Still Hide to Smoke
Genre: Drama
Released: 2016
Duration: 90 min
Cast: Hiam Abbass, Fadila Belkebla, Nadia Kaci, Nassima Benchicou, Sarah Layssac

Rayhana Obermeyer20161h 30mDrama

Why we chose it

Over one day in an Algerian hammam, women say what they can’t say on the street. Rayhana Obermeyer wrote both the film and the play behind it, and since filming in Algeria proved impossible, the bathhouse is actually in Thessaloniki. Inside, the women shelter one another from the extremism outside.

Synopsis

In Algiers in 1995, the women of the neighbourhood come to the hammam to undress, smoke and talk in peace, while the masseuse Fatima keeps order. Outside, civil war rages and the law grows more radical every year. Then a sixteen-year-old walks in, pregnant and unmarried, and her brother is already looking for her.