L'autre monde

In this powerful drama, Yasmine (Marie Brahimi) is a woman of Algerian descent living in France whose husband Rachid (Nazim Boudjenah) is a soldier in the French army. French forces are sent into Algeria, and when Rachid is declared missing, Yasmine travels to her homeland in hopes of finding him.

Islamic fundamentalism has swept the country, and Yasmine finds herself caught somewhere between her open-minded attitudes as a modern French woman and the Algerian Muslim traditions with which she was raised; as one cynical friend explains to her, You can do anything you want, as long as it's not in public.

Eventually Yasmine finds Rachid, but not before getting an eye-opening glimpse of the current state of Algerian culture. L'Autre Monde received its North American premier at the 2001 Montreal Film Festival.