Global Lens 2007 is a monthly film series created to promote cross-cultural understanding through the universal language of cinema during a time of great change throughout the world.

Enough! (Barakat!)
Directed by Djamila Sahraoui
In Arabic and French with English subtitles
Algeria / France, 2006, 94 minutes

The time is the mid-1990s, the worst years of civil war in Algeria and Amel, a young doctor living in a small seaside town, returns home from work to discover her husband, a journalist, has not come home for the second night in a row. Fearing that he may have been kidnapped or even killed for an article he wrote about war and the resistance, Amel goes to the police, but is ignored. Frustrated, she solicits the aid of a neighbor, who tells her about an encampment of resistance-fighters in the mountains, indicating that her husband might be found there. Amel leaves at once, joined by Khadidja, an elderly nurse who knows that civil war has made Algeria a difficult place for a young woman on her own. The trip is dangerous from the start. The women are threatened for taking up space on the road, and abused and insulted for their western clothes and modern attitudes. They encounter resistance-fighters in the mountains, but not Amel’s husband and are subsequently left to find their way down the mountainside without their car and possessions, including their shoes. But despite the difficulties, the two women are undeterred, ignoring curfews and the constant threat of ambush by armed militia to challenge the men they meet, and ultimately forge a bond of mutual affection and respect that leads to a deeper understanding of how their lives were shaped by their country's history.

“A tense, engrossing and brilliantly acted drama, Barakat! is . . . a stirring tale of female heroism that confronts the uncomfortable history of a troubled region.”
-Michael Hayden, BFI 50th London Film Festival

“Anchored by a pair of magnificently intense lead performances, Barakat! is a women’s story set in a country wracked by violence.”
-2006 Melbourne International Film Festival

2006 Golden Muhr Award for Best Narrative Film, DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (UAE)