Apatride

They look like they don’t belong there, pitched on the sunny dunes. They flap indifferently in the wind, watched over by a soldier. For Hénia, these two flags, which mark the border between Morocco and Algeria, have determined the course of her life: in 1975, she and her father were deported from Algeria along with 45,000 other Moroccan families. Her Algerian mother remained behind; her father died soon afterward. Hénia has grown into a woman in the meantime, but she’s still trying to go home. Unfortunately, her papers disappeared along with her father. Day after day, Hénia looks over to the other side from her house on the beach, while birds drift by as if there were no barriers, and the border soldiers of both nations, whom she already knew when they were all young, sing songs of brotherhood through the fence. The prospect of papers finally leads her to marry an old widower, but once again she is the pawn of other interests. Hénia must take her fate into her own hands. A quietly sensual film set before a bewitching backdrop that recounts the consequences of a historical event whose effects are still being felt today. (Berlinale)