The Arab (2026)

“A story in which the distinction between perpetrator, victim, convicted person and acquitted person is paper-thin.” -Esha Guy Hadjadj (De Groene Amsterdammer)

On Monday 23 March, writer, journalist and translator Esha Guy Hadjadj will give an introduction to THE ARAB, following his article in De Groene Amsterdammer about THE ARAB and L’ÉTRANGER, two new films that relate in different ways to Camus’s famous novella. This introduction will be given in English. 

In Albert Camus' “L'Étranger”, a man named Meursault awaits his execution. He has been sentenced to death for the murder of a man whose name he does not know. But who was this “Arab”? In 2013, Algerian writer Kamel Daoud provided an answer in the form of the book “Meursault, contre-enquête”, in which he reopens the case and looks at it from a different perspective. With THE ARAB (2026), Malek Bensmail brings this postcolonial answer to life and focuses on Algeria itself, the “land of a million martyrs”. The now elderly brother of the hitherto ignored “Arab” tells his story and, with it, the story of Algeria.