In the aftermath of World War 2, France attempted to replenish its weakened work force by recruiting men from North Africa. In the mid-1970′s, the French government relaxed its immigration policy to allow the families of Algerian men to join them. Inch’Allah Dimanche provides us with a deeply moving memoir of the sense of isolation and vulnerability that the immigrant family experienced upon their arrival at a time when racial integration was virtually non-existent.
Zouina (Fejria Deliba in a richly emotional performance) is a woman who is torn from her home in Algeria. With her three children and her abrupt mother-in-law, Aicha (Rabia Modedem), she rejoins her husband in a foreign and unaccommodating land. She finds herself feeling imprisoned between a distant husband who scorns her, a hostile mother-in-law and a neighbor (a comedic France Darry) who is afraid of Fejria’s otherness. But Zouina’s finally begins to feel a sense of acceptance when she meets a cosmetics factory worker who sparks in Zouina an interest in French culture and her new world. This curiosity, and her longing for freedom and experience, drives Zouina to take secret excursions with her children on Sundays, the one day that her husband and mother-in-law are out of the house. Through these little adventures, she comes to terms with the difficulties of immigration, change, and adaptation to a new culture.
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