Algeria, in the nineties…
Slimane is one of the five survivors of the Sidi-Salem massacre, a little farming village lost in the dry high plateau of Eastern Algeria. All of the survivors are amnesiac. Everybody has been identified except for Slimane.
No one knows if he is a persecutor or a victim…

Many years later, Slimane has become a Raqi, an Islamic exorcist. From the rocky plains to the most isolated farms, he roams through the country, going where the demon is, fighting the devil's torments. He spends his days reciting the Koran on the bedside of the possessed and his nights losing himself in alcohol and prostitutes in shady clubs, wasting his entire state pension.

One morning, the man who took Slimane in his house after the massacre and taught him Ruqya's secrets, dies in his sleep…

Some time later, a woman knocks on Slimane's door. She is convinced that her son, an autistic teenager, is possessed…

She slowly gets into the Raqi's life. Soon after, the grave of the old man is desecrated: his spleen has been ripped off. One by one, the Sidi-Salem survivors are murdered and their spleens are also ripped off.

Meanwhile, Slimane fails to exorcise the teenager, and it's becoming more and more difficult for him to practice Ruqyas.

As he is about to give up, Slimane understands that only a final Ruqya can put an end to the neverending horror… The very horror that could help him find out who he really is, the horror that should have ended years ago, in Sidi-Salem.

A film by Yanis Koussim

Algeria / France, Feature Narrative, 90 min · Color, Original Language: Arabic

Director's note
Nightmares we have while sleeping exorcise our deepest fears once we are awakend. For over a century, horror movies took this role on a collective scale. Each era has its own fears, every fear has its outlets movies. "Ruqya" is my nightmare, it is any country's that has experienced a decade of indescribable fear due to Islamic terrorism. The more a nightmare seems real, the better it fulfills its purpose. In terms of both form and content, Ruqya will be as realistic as possible. No grimacing creatures nor repulsive monsters. There will be only human… The worst of demons.
Yanis Koussim

Production company
Mille et Une Productions (Paris)


Locarno Film Festival
Film project: Open Doors
https://pardo.ch/orig/pardo/program/film.html?fid=795501&eid=68

___________

Regista
Yanis Koussim

Produzione
Mille et une productions
f.ladjimi@1001productions.net

Based on
Original screenplay

Shooting format
4K

Shooting location
Algeria

Shooting start date
08/2016

Expected completion date
10/2017

Production status
Writing / Development

Budget
1.520.034 Euro

Financing in place
245.034 Euro

Locarno Film Festival
Film projects: Open Doors
https://pardo.ch/it/pardo/program/film?fid=795501&eid=68&