*CFP* "REFOCUS: THE FILMS OF RACHID BOUCHAREB, EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS RECOFUS SERIES

Rachid Bouchareb was born in Paris in 1953 to Algerian parents and became one of France’s first French filmmakers of North African descent. While his career now spans over thirty years and his diverse films have garnered both mainstream and critical success, including three Oscar nominations, there exists no book-length study (in French or English) on Bouchareb’s body of work. The director’s films are remarkably varied in their themes, formal elements, and narrative settings, from Senegal, England, Vietnam, and Algeria, to France, Belgium, Turkey, and the United States. While diverse in many ways, Bouchareb’s films are also linked by certain key concerns: the mixing of cultures, engagement with contemporary political issues and debates, immigration, and identity, among others. The director achieved national and international recognition for Indigènes/Days of Glory (2006) and Hors-la-loi/Outside the Law (2010), which both examine France’s colonial ties to North Africa, yet Bouchareb’s cinematic corpus extends well beyond this framework, and the full range of it has not been considered at length. In addition, Bouchareb’s work as a producer is an important yet often overlooked part of his career that merits critical attention.