Death of the Algerian director Mohammed Lakhdar Hamina, Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1975 – Liberation
The death of a unique course. The Algerian director and producer, Mohammed Lakhdar Hamina, the only Arab and African filmmaker crowned in Cannes, died this Friday at his home in Algiers, at the age of 95, announced his family.
He leaves « Behind him an invaluable cinematographic heritage »wrote her children in a statement, where they greet « His unique vision that marked the history of cinema » and describe it as a builder of a « A real cultural bridge between the south and the West, becoming the voice of the Third World and its country for almost forty years ».
He is one of the few African and Arab directors to have contributed four times to the Cannes Film Festival, winning two major distinctions, the prize for the first work for The Aurès wind and the prestigious palm of gold for Chronicle of Broise Years In 1975. He was the dean of the Palme d’Or even alive winners. The 2025 Cannes Film Festival, which unveils its record this Saturday, had also paid tribute to it by projecting a 4K version of the film on the occasion of the program « Cannes Classic ».
In a message of condolences, Algerian president Albdelmajid Tebboune expressed his « Deep sadness and pain » After the death of this « Giant of global cinema ». According to Abdelmajid Tebboune, Chronicle of Broise Years had made it possible to open « The eyes of the world on part of the sufferings of the Algerian people during the colonial period ».
The struggle for the independence of Algeria was at the heart of this great historical fresco which recounts in six paintings, from 1939 to 1954, the birth of a nation with the journey of the Algerian people until the embraces against French colonization and the war of independence (1954-1962).
« Before being a global creative director who left an indelible imprint in the history of world cinema, he was a worthy moudjahid, having contributed to the liberation of his country through images and scenes that made humanity known the heroisms of the glorious liberation revolution »A Abdelmajid Tebboune.
Born February 26, 1934 in M’Sila in Aurès (northeast), Mohammed Lakhdar Hamina was the son of modest peasants of the highlands. After a school of agriculture, he had studied in France in Antibes where he had met his wife, mother of their four sons. During the Algerian war, his father had been removed, torture and killed by the French army. Himself called in 1958, he had joined the Algerian resistance in Tunis.
He had learned cinema on the job, through an internship at Tunisian news before embarking on first short films. His career as a director, started in 1964 with the documentary But one day of November and finished with the Twilight of shadows, Includes seven films and a documentary.
