The dissolution of the development fund of the film industry carries a very hard blow to the seventh Algerian art.
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Sofia Djama does not mince words. The dissolution of the Art, Technology and Cinematographic Industry Development Fund (FDATIC) signs purely and simply, “the killing of Algerian cinema, estimates the director. We accumulate delay with projects blocked since Two years, alerts the filmmaker. Professionals are an increasingly precarious situation. It is impossible to project themselves. “
“In danger”, “on the verge of asphyxiation” … The seventh Algerian art “no longer has public funding and we have no answer as to what is planned to keep it alive”, s ‘Indignant several professionals in the sector in a shared gallery since mid-March on social networks.
A wrath all the more bitter since the broadcasting and exploitation networks of films in Algeria have long been failing. The country no longer has around twenty rooms, against nearly 450 in 1962.
Launched five years after independence, the FDATIC was one of the few, if not the only one, public devices for supporting cinematographic creation in Algeria. On their own, the subsidies he allocated were never sufficient to fully finance a film, recognize professionals.
budget cuts
But these sums, which could reach 300,000 euros, were “important for initiating negotiations with foreign partners”, underlines Yacine Bouaziz, producer within Thala Films, a company created in 2010 in Algiers.
Official since December 31, 2021, the abolition of the FDATIC was decided within the framework of the budget cuts carried out by the finance law. A consequence of the economic crisis, but also of the opacity which surrounded the management of this fund, estimates Aziz Hamdi, project manager at the working group on cultural policy in Algeria (GTPCA), an independent collective created in 2013.
“Few films displayed their balance sheets after each production. Nor did we know the FDATIC budget, the selection criteria or how high the films were funded,” he said.
“There has certainly been mismanagement. We know that there have been productions that have benefited from too much largeness, but that is not to say that it is necessary to sacrifice this fund which also has enabled the emergence of films made with an accounting respectful of the law, “says Sofia Djama, whose next film, Thursday minus a quarter, will have to do without Algerian public funding.
try to reassure Professionals
The director, whose first feature film Les Blessed was selected at the Venice Mostra in 2017, fears that the disappearance of public aid discourages the aspiring filmmakers. Despite the lack of means, a new generation of authors and filmmakers had emerged in recent years and “began to become an identifiable force in the circuits of international festivals, she said. We were talking about us as the new wave Algerian cinema “.
In 2019, Yacine Bouaziz had thus participated in the Cannes festival with the production of Abu Leïla of the Algerian director Amin Sidi-Boumediene. In 2022, no Algerian film appears in the selection of the Cannes festival and, on the producers’ side, it is flat calm.