FILM SCREENING
DR. FRANTZ FANON
Directed by Abdenour Zahzah

(Algeria, 2024, 1 hour 30 minutes)
French with English subtitles

The film will be followed by a conversation between Samia Henni and Abdenour Zahzah

This is the first feature film of Abdenour Zahzah about Frantz Omar Fanon (1925–1961), the French Afro-Caribbean writer – author of Les Damnés de la Terre (The Wretched of the Earth) – from the island of Martinique, a psychiatrist, political philosopher and anti-colonial activist who played a key role in treating and theorizing the psychological and psychiatric agony of colonialism. In the film, Fanon is appointed head doctor at the Blida-Joinville Hospital, where he puts into practice his theories of “institutional psychotherapy,” challenging the racist doctrines of the Algiers School of Psychiatry. 

Abdenour Zahzah is an Algerian screenwriter, director and producer. Further to his university graduation, Abdenour was director at the Blida (province in Algeria) cinémathèque from 1998 through 2003. His first film Frantz Fanon, mémoire d’asile was released in 2002. He traveled to France, where he made two documentary films, and spent a long time at the Moulin d’Andé in Normandy, where he made a film with the writer Maurice Pons. Returning to Algeria in 2007, he made several commissioned documentaries, but it was with his short fiction film Garagouz, a multi-award-winning film, that he made a name for himself. After a feature-length documentary, L’Oued, L’Oued, which won critical acclaim at festivals, he directed his first feature-length fiction film in 2024, about Dr. Frantz Fanon’s Blida-Joinville years.