Répéter une scène de crime : « Abou Leila » (2020) d’Amin Sidi Boumédiène

Abstract

This article examines the way in which Amin Sidi Boumédiène's film Abou Leila (2020) crystallizes the Algerian tragedy of the 1990s through the story of a quest for revenge that “repeats a crime scene” by deploying it on the scale of the vast Algerian territory. The pursuit by two policemen (released of their uniforms) of a chimerical terrorist named Abou Leila seems to satisfy a desire for “national” revenge against crimes that remain unpunished to this day. The resulting murderous madness tells the alienation of an entire country caught up in a fratricidal war. Repeating the crime, Sidi Boumédiène's film dilates and concentrates space and time, blurring our generic reference points, confusing truth and falsehood, reality and fantasy, human and beast, and, summoning myth or fable, confronts the missing images of Algeria's black decade.