The Arab

In a post-colonial flip, director Malek Bensmaïl approaches Albert Camus’ nihilistic novel The Outsider from the perspective of the Algerian victim.

In 1990s Algeria, a journalist covering the civil war by day has a chance encounter in a bar at night. Haroun, an elderly man, claims that Albert Camus’ novel The Outsider is based on fact and that his brother is the Arab famously killed on the beach by a Frenchman named Meursault.

Haroun recounts his story, losing his brother Moussa and the profound impact his death has on his family, set against a period of enormous change in Algeria.

Curator's note
The Algerian man from Camus’ The Outsider – also the subject of The Cure’s debut single Killing an Arab – has always been unnamed and unknowable.

Adapted from Kamel Daoud’s acclaimed 2013 novel The Meursault Investigation, Malek Bensmaïl and Jacques Fieschi’s screenplay approaches Camus’ The Outsider from the perspective of the unnamed man, killed on the beach. A name is given to him – Moussa – as well as a life, love and family.

Flipped around, the deliberate, cold distance of Camus’ novel is traded for feeling, loss and trauma, each carried through decades – inescapable and impossible to distance oneself from.

The Arab premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.