Born in M'Sila in 1934, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina joined the Algerian independence struggle's film unit in Tunis and became the leading director of Algerian cinema after independence. Wind of the Aurès (1966) was a fierce first feature about a mother looking for her son, taken by the French. Chronicle of the Years of Fire (1975), an epic that follows a peasant from drought in 1939 to the start of the war of independence in 1954, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the only Arab or African film to have won it.
Filmography
- Wind of the Aurès (1966)
- December (1972)
- Chronicle of the Years of Fire (1975)
- Sandstorm (1982)