‘Roqia’ Review: [B] Venice
Playing in competition at this year’s Venice Critics’ Week, Yanis Koussim’s Roqia is a rare Middle Eastern genre film that takes narrative risks that mostly pay off, even if some of its segments needed slightly better execution. A challenging film that will have its fans among the arthouse audience internationally, Roqia draws several parallels between fiction and reality, inviting us to unpack its symbolism and ponder about a future in which hate trumps compassion, and radicalization runs rampant, diminishing any hope for co-existence and mutual understanding.
A unique blend of body horror and exorcism, it is to the film’s credit that it is uncompromising in its vision, with several sequences leaving enough mystery and ambiguity to make it one of those films you need to sit with a bit once the lights go on, connecting the dots and making your own conclusions rather than being exactly sure about what you’ve just seen. At a time when financing is scarce and indie filmmakers – especially from the Middle East which is a region that has always been turbulent politically – face increasingly tough conditions to get their films made, it is wonderful to witness films like Roqia grace the screen, offering something that feels fresh and new even if not entirely accomplished in execution.
Taking place in three chapters, the film opens with a harrowing sequence in which we witness a group of blood-thirsty men storming through an Algerian village in the 1990s. Loud screams are heard before we witness bloodshed, torture and acts that reek of revenge and spite. This unforgettable sequence, crucial to the film, is a direct reference to the civil war that took place in Algeria in 1992 in which the government battled a rising radicalized Islamist movement that took the souls of thousands of innocent victims. The war continued until 2002 and there was always a possibility that another civil war could erupt at any time. The war back then might have been over, but there are no guarantees that the country had moved on from radicalization.
The first chapter introduces us to an elderly exorcist, a religious Sheikh who, along with his liyal disciple, spends his day visiting the homes of those cursed with evil spirits much to the horror of their loving families. In one visit, an evil spirit seems to have a made a connection, in the form of a conversation in undecipherable language, with the Sheikh, rendering him a ghost of the man he once was. Strange occurrences soon start to unfold, in the Sheikh’s home as well as on the streets. A series of violent crimes hit the city and the disciple starts to question his master’s involvement in them. Meanwhile, the Sheikh starts to exhibit signs of Alzheimer’s, waking up at night and wandering aimlessly inside the house and forgetting key pieces of info. If he forgets who he is, how does that impact the future of the city? The disciple seems to wonder whether a looming threat has a direct connection with the Sheikh’s fading memory amidst an atmosphere of dread that has spread all over the city.
Chapter two takes us to the present, as we follow a young man who had vanished some time back in a car accident, only to suddenly return with no trace of the car itself. He has no memory of who he is, and when his family welcomes him back to the house, his youngest son seems convinced he is not his father. It doesn’t help that his head is entirely wrapped in bandages. The man’s loss of memory scares him, but he is soon even more scared of getting it back as memories of atrocities he had once committed come back to haunt him.
The final chapter, taking place in the present, shows us the aftermath of what happened to the Sheikh’s neighbor who seems to have been possessed. The mysterious men, seen in the film’s opening sequence, return to devour her, leading up to a bloody and pulpy climax.
Roqia draws parallels between exorcism and radicalization in sometimes brilliant, sometimes clunky ways. Koussim uses evil spirits, inhibiting the souls of once-peaceful citizens, as an allegory for what it’s like to lose one’s humanity and succumb to darker thoughts of revenge, hate and exclusion of the other. His characters lose their essence to a much stronger power that blinds them and uses them as weapons of destruction of their own communities, neighbors, and their own families. While some sequences are well filmed, others lack some polishing, veering on exaggeration at times. Still, the film manages to effectively provoke its audiences, leaving them highly uncomfortable as they witness the atrocities on screen. It is an urgent reminder that the greatest loss of all is that of our own humanity, in a world where tolerance and acceptance seem to be fading away.
Grade: B
This review is from the 2025 Venice Film Festival where Roqia had its world premiere. There is no U.S. distribution at this time.
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