Rome Rather Than You

Roma wa la n'toura (English: Rome Rather Than You; French: Rome plutôt que vous) is a 2006 Algerian-French-German drama film directed by Tariq Teguia, starring Samira Kaddour and Rachid Amrani as two young people who seek to leave Algeria and the Algerian Civil War behind for a brighter future. This is Teguia's feature film directorial debut. (He had previously made a few shorts and a 2002 documentary. ) The film won the Special Jury Award at the 2007 Fribourg International Film Festival.

Plot
Twenty-year-old Kamel and his friend, twenty-three-year-old Zina, search Algiers for human trafficker Bosco to obtain forged passports so they can leave the country for Rome.

Reception
Variety magazine critic Robert Koehler praised "Tariq Teguia’s highly accomplished debut ... Although the final moments are foreseeable, both the getting there and the immediate aftermath show Teguia to be a director of major promise". Koehler also approved of the "naturalistic, easygoing perfs [performances]" of Kaddoui and Amrani. In Slant Magazine, however, Eric Henderson considered the film to be "arrogantly conceived, pretentiously executed, and petulantly protracted".

Cast

 * Samira Kaddour as Zina
 * Rachid Amrani	as Kamel
 * Ahmed Benaissa as The policeman
 * Kader Affak as Malek
 * Lali Maloufi as Merzak
 * Moustapha Benchaïb as Mahmoud
 * Khaddra Boudedhane as Zina's mother
 * Rabbie Azzabi as Young man in sportswear
 * Fethi Ghares as Young man in working overalls