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IT WAS OUR LAND
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Open in the appThe Montaigne estate, somewhere in northern Algeria. 653 hectares transformed into an agricultural operation, where eucalyptus, vines, oats and wheat grow. The Saint-André family has always reigned over this land – or more precisely, since the mid-19th century when they settled… The Montaigne estate, somewhere in northern Algeria. 653 hectares transformed into an agricultural operation, where eucalyptus, vines, oats and wheat grow. The Saint-André family has always reigned over this land – or more precisely, since the mid-19th century when they settled there, like so many other families carrying out the French project of colonial settlement in Algeria. In a choral narrative, the voices of six members of this family intertwine to tell, each in their own way, the moment of the collapse of their world – the Algerian war of independence. Bringing together five actors and actresses on a stage inhabited by the painting of Kabyle artist Kamel Khélif, Célie Pauthe gives voice to the chorus of these characters who, through their violent contradictions, expose the entire madness of the colonial system – French, but not only – its self-destructive rage, its sickly nostalgia. The director brings to the stage, for the first time, the burning, baroque and relentless language of novelist Mathieu Belezi, by adapting the first of four novels he devotes to France's colonization of Algeria. With this narrative that weaves the voice of the dead with that of the living, Célie Pauthe invites us to "look History in the eye", as German playwright Heiner Müller said – and reopen a history, that of colonization, which is far from finished, nor from spreading its harmful logic onto our present.