Rachid Bouchareb’s ethical cinema: Louisette and Annie, two women in the Algerian war of independence

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses the ethics of representation in Franco-Algerian filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb’s short 2019 documentaries Louisette and Annie, which highlight the participation of mujahidat (female militants) Louisette Ighilahriz and Annie Fiorio-Steiner in the 1954–1962 war of independence from the French. Given how much these women suffered (including under torture) during the war, how to convey their experiences in an ethical manner is a central concern. Bouchareb achieves an ethical balance between avoiding voyeurism and bearing testimony to these women’s suffering and active agency through using film techniques that approach his protagonists with respect, a central feature of his ethical cinema. He also relies on techniques that enhance spectatorial identification with the protagonists through triggering emotional responses. I identify and detail specific formal and thematic choices he made to highlight the past’s continuing relevance to the present and to centre women’s experiences, voices, and bodies. The films finally honour mujahidat (almost a decade after Bouchareb’s male-centred epic film Hors la loi). Seeking to both stage and remedy the difficult anamnesis of the war, they bring memories together and carry messages about the need to always fight against injustice that are relevant on both sides of the Mediterranean, sixty years later.