Underground discos thud to the beat of dance music as men and women dress to the nines and slip through checkpoints to party the night away. Meanwhile, fingers on triggers, tensions mount between armed police forces and anti-government guerillas. This is Algiers in the 1990’s, and what headstrong fashion student Nedjma, ‘Papicha’ to her friends, doesn’t know, is that her life is about to change forever...

Lifting the lid on the radical events of the Algerian Civil War, Mounia Meddour’s debut feature follows the trials and tribulations of a group of determined young women as they come face to face with anew, dangerous reality.

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