Top 3 french movies that I love | Claudiu Dumitrache

1. What the Day Owes the Night (2012)

What the Day Owes the Night (French: Ce que le jour doit à la nuit) is a 2012 French romantic drama film based on the novel of the same name by Yasmina Khadra. It was directed and produced by Alexandre Arcady, who also wrote the screenplay with Blandine Stintzy and Daniel Saint-Hamont.

The film looks over the life of a young man, Younes, from his childhood in Algeria in the 1930s to nowadays. The story goes over the tragedies that occurred in his country like the battle of Mers El-Kebir and the Algerian War but also the love story of Emilie and Younes.

Younes’s family owns a wheat field in the countryside next to Oran, expecting an abundant harvest. Unfortunately, the field is set on fire by the Cheikh henchmen, to whom the family owes money. Unable to pay the debt, the family is expropriated by the colonial administration to the benefit of the Cheikh whose first goal was to get the family’s land.

Now ruined and without any money, they move to the nearest city, Oran, where Issa, Younes’s father, works difficult jobs for a pittance. Physically and psychologically worn, Issa is resigned to give his son away to Mohamed, his elder pharmacist brother, to whom he didn’t speak for a long time because Mohamed married a…