Perdus entre deux rives, les Chibanis oubliés Filming Locations

Their names are Abdallah, Ahmou, Mohamed, Ramdane, Salah, Sebti, Tahar. They came from Algeria between 1951 and 1971, alone, to work in France, and planned, one day, to return to the country. Years have passed, they are retired now and they are still there. For all these decades they have lived one foot here, one foot there. They had a back-and-forth life. Some were not only "mandate fathers", others regret not having seen their children grow up. These men did not do family reunification, for various reasons, in particular because initially, they did not intend to stay here. After all these years spent in France, the fantasized return has become an "impossible dream" for two main reasons: one administrative when they perceive a meager retirement, the other symbolic because they have lived longer here than there- down. The attachment to the host country has become stronger than that of the native land even if it remains, sometimes, idealized. They migrated from one shore to the other of the Mediterranean without really measuring the rupture that this was going to cause. Not completely from here, more really from there, after a disjointed professional life, a torn life, they come to finish their old days in Marseille, alone. From here, the homeland is not far, almost on the distant horizon. The nostalgia is slowly disappearing. After exile and uprooting, it is loneliness that cradles the last days of those forgotten during the 30 Glorieuses. Filmed with gentleness and tenderness, these Chibanis are both luminous and beautiful, funny and attached.