Part of First Look 2026

Dir. Yanis Koussim. 2025, 89 mins. France/Algeria/Qatar/Saudi Arabia.

With Ali Namous, Mostefa Djadjam, Hanaa Mansour, Akram Djeghim.

Algerian filmmaker Yanis Koussim makes his feature debut with this unsettling horror fable that reshapes the exorcism genre to its own disturbing and politically meaningful ends. A film that seems to emerge from the fog of a nightmare, Roqia moves between narratives set in different time periods that reckon with the violent stretch of recent history known as Algeria’s “Black Decade,” when a civil war broke out between the country’s government and groups of Islamist rebels. In one, a Raqi tends to the possessed while battling his own dementia; in another, husband and father Ahmed returns home after a car crash and is unrecognizable to his own fearful child. As with his startling, Rotterdam-winning short Khouya (My Brother), Koussim shows his abilities for electrifying, physical filmmaking, and Roqia achieves its creeping terror with mastery and originality. 

North American premiere