house of shadows

Documentary by Amine Hattou / 90 mins / in Development

co-produced with Libre Images (Algeria) & ida.ida. (france)

House of Shadows is a documentary using the codes of horror film to take the viewer on a psychological journey through the past and present of “Laghouat” – a city in Southern Algeria marked by a tragic colonial event called “The Year of the Vanishing”, where the French killed 2/3 of the population and buried them in mass graves. During four seasons, the story follows four protagonists – the director and three tormented characters – as they gravitate around a city haunted by the ghosts of the violent past.  House of shadows will use the Horror genre as a way to embodies the deepest fears of the protagonists and bring them to life, it’s a film about the unspoken and the hidden, that only the liberation of speech can cope with it, that only cinema can cope with it.

Nominated for the Filmprize of the Robert Bosch Foundation / selected for CINEPHILIA BOUND CANNES 2020