in memory of his mother, Karim Aïnouz films his father’s discovery of Algeria

When the documentary starts, it almost resembles those holiday films, recognizable by their swaying shots. Karim Aïnouz, who narrates his journey and his emotions, skillfully orchestrates his absence on screen, while his voice is omnipresent. Perhaps because it is not necessary to see it when the filmmaker reveals his soul. The photos of his personal objects in his hotel room are all traces of a presence that Aïnouz strives to relegate to the background. The main subject being this Algeria that he should have discovered with his mother Iracema, a Brazilian from Fortaleza and a specialist in red algae.

In Mountain Sailoreverything goes back to Iracema, Karim Aïnouz’s real interlocutor. He tells her about his arrival by sea, a solution that he would not have chosen if she had accompanied him. Iracema is everywhere in the images, filmed at all ages, in the photos and especially in her memory.

His father, the great absence from his life, occupies Karim Aïnouz’s mind just as much. The American meeting of his parents earned him his existence, but the romance between Majid, “the progenitor”and Iracema belongs to those love stories that end badly.

An explosion of colors

Aïnouz’s film is a formally rich document because it brings together filmed images and clichés, rendered just as dynamic as the first. On screen, the viewer can perceive all the virtuosity of the visual artist Karim Aïnouz. The filmmaker seems to have combined all the shades that can be given to an image. Sepia, black and white, saturated colors, monochrome shades like red, a nod no doubt to this algae that his mother studied and which transforms “Algiers, the white” into “Algiers, the red”. Everything is there, in terms of coloring and photography, to give a unique identity to the film and make it a true visual experience.

Aïnouz even takes the time to treat himself to a little fiction when he stages a Kabyle legend told to him by his little cousin Inès, met at Taguemount Azouz, his father’s native village in Kabylia. In red letters is then written, in Tifinagh (characters in which Kabyle is written), a short story of local mythology.

The fever of absence

From this trip, which seems to have obsessed him since the age of 8, Karim Aïnouz manages to reconstruct a history of Algeria. That of a people who fought in blood to acquire their independence and whose youth, like their father, made the revolution a leitmotif. But also of a State, today rich in oil revenues, which nevertheless struggles to give a horizon to these young people, some of whom stare at the sea, all day long, dreaming of a hypothetical elsewhere.

Mountain Sailor is also similar to the story of daily life, that of men and women encountered in the streets and who go about their business, to the sound of the sounds of the sea or the cable car. During his wanderings, Karim Aïnouz encountered a butcher in his red decor, young people dancing at night or passing faces, sometimes suspicious, in cafes. All these people, whose portraits punctuate his film, gave him the feeling of finally being at home, where Aïnouz is no longer an unpronounceable name. But this appeasement, it seems, was temporary, not sparing him a form of calenture, this fever that sailors know well.

The sheet

Gender : documentary
Director: Karim Aïnouz
Actors: Karim Aïnouz
Country : Brazil, France
Duration : 1h35
Exit : April 17, 2024
Distributer : Films from both shores