When the ring becomes a stage, when the ring‑mate becomes Haroun, and when the audience wonders whether to applaud or call for help, we know French cinema has reached the pinnacle of “it’s nice and all, but…”
In the great circus of French culture, the latest act is entrusted to Dali Benssalah, that former Thai‑boxing champion who, after an injury, swapped gloves for lines and enrolled at the Academy of the Arts of Unexpected Revelation. His new role, Haroun, the brother of the Arab killed by Meursault in Camus’s *The Stranger*, places him at the heart of a film that claims to be “indispensable” for our times. Far from being a simple part, it is a true baptism of fire: the Algerian West of 1986 opens with massacre scenes that feel as if the set were brush‑painted by an acid‑trip expressionist.
What the trailers don’t show is that the shoot required a psychological‑first‑aid service provided by the company “Café‑Therapy”, whose slogan is “When drama overwhelms you, we serve it to you by the spoon”. According to the evidence‑consultant Gérard Pompon, “The film can turn a viewer into a philosopher of despair in less than twenty minutes, which, for dark‑room cinemas, creates a new commercial slot between the kung‑fu screening and the yoga class.” He adds, with the gravitas of a common‑sense Supreme Court judge, that the film’s resonance “is measured in decibels of conscience”, a metric that 5.1‑equipped theatres will have to consider muting to avoid collective anxiety attacks.
At the same time, the imaginary journalist Lucien Ventreaux, columnist for *Gazette du Néant*, wonders about the role of the “journalist who wants to tell exactly what he sees” in the film. “If the journalist is responsible for what he sees, then the director is responsible for what he shows, and the viewer is responsible for what he doesn’t understand,” he declares while sipping lemon tea that, according to future dietitians, can neutralize negative emotions. This circular logic, found in political speeches and laundry‑detergent ads, is here elevated to a major art form, to the point that the fictional Minister of Culture Sylvestre Bidochon announced a new university degree: Master in Historical Resonance and Cognitive Relaxation.
The film, loosely adapted from Kamel Daoud’s investigative piece, also poses a counter‑challenge to academicians who each year debate Camus’s place in school curricula. Professor Archibald Poudrin, historian of the absurd at the University of Grand Illusion, explains that “giving a name to the Arab is like assigning a serial number to a cloud.” He notes that the presence of a brother named Haroun opens the door to metaphysical debates about the duality of name and anonymity, a subject that, in his view, deserves the same seriousness as the question of toilet‑paper colour in public institutions.
As for Dali himself, he does more than play Haroun; he embodies the paradox of the pacifist fighter. In an interview he said, “I think this film has an importance and an indispensable resonance today.” In communication terms, that means the film is both a reminder of past violence and a call to the violence of vigilance. His speech, peppered with references to journalistic responsibility, resembles a moral lesson delivered by an acid‑trip Shaolin monk, where every word is weighed like a feather‑weight in the arena of collective memory.
It should be noted that the film is not limited to tragedy. Between two scenes of children lying on the ground, the viewer is invited to admire the desert landscapes of western Algeria, filmed by drone by the collective “Wings of Memory”, which claims each grain of sand holds a memory. Artistic director Balthazar Cadran also asserted that the original soundtrack, composed by the symphonic metal group “Sounds of Silence”, was written backwards so that the audience, moving back in time, can hear regrets before they manifest.
In the end, *The Arab* turns out to be a distorted mirror, where each viewer can see his own reflection—sometimes as a boxer, sometimes as a journalist, sometimes as a disillusioned philosopher. The film, with its blend of violence, consciousness and a soundtrack that plays in reverse, offers a lesson in humility: even the greatest fighters of modern life, like Dali Benssalah, sometimes realise that the real battle takes place in the heads of the audience, and the only way to win it is to talk about it on television, debate it in cafés, and especially to consume it in small sips, like a good glass of red wine, before falling asleep dreaming of a world where Arabs finally have a name.
Based on “Dali Benssalah, on the poster of ‘The Arab’: ‘This film has an indispensable resonance today’” (francetvinfo.fr, 2026‑11‑05). Read the original article →
⚠️ Satirical article. Truth hurts but it does good. So don’t take it too seriously.
Translated from French.