Mia Bendrimia’s ‘Magma,’ Produced With Oscar Nominee Kira Simon-Kennedy, Confronts France’s ‘Willful Amnesia’ About Colonial Past in Algeria

variety.com:

Christopher Vourlias French Algerian filmmaker Mia Bendrimia takes an emotional journey into both a family’s and a country’s past in her documentary feature debut “Magma,” which is participating in the Docs in Progress strand of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival’s industry section, Agora.

The film, which is produced by Bendrimia, Oscar nominee Kira Simon-Kennedy (“Ascension”) and Imane Lamime for Nazar Films and 19 Mulholland Drive, follows the director on a quest to understand her family’s Algerian roots, a troubled history long buried by silence around a bitter chapter in France’s colonial past.

In the search to understand how colonization tore her family apart, she travels to Algeria for the very first time, where she discovers how the painful memories of the past continue to find echoes in the present.

Set against the backdrop of Algeria’s war for independence, “Magma” is nevertheless an intimate story about a family grappling with the “intergenerational trauma” of its complicated connection to the North African country, according to Bendrimia.