Le Gone du Chaaba (1998) **

Directed by Christophe Ruggia. With Bouzid Negnoug, Mohammed Fellag and Nabil Ghalem. A neo-realist drama about Algerian immigrants in France, adapted from an autobiographical novel by Azouz Begag, who grew up in a miserable slum near Lyon in the 1960's. It's a powerful social chronicle of a small community already alienated from their old culture, and struggling (often unsuccesfully) to integrate into a new one.