From Mounia Meddour, the director of the international, Cesar-award-winning Papicha (2019) comes Houria, featuring an astonishing performance from Lyna Khoudri as a dancer who must fight a devastating injury to join Algeria’s National Ballet.
Houria (Khoudri) is a young and talented dancer who knows she’s destined for great things. To pay her bills, she cleans homes by day and bets on clandestine ram fights at night. But when she takes a big cash prize, she’s assaulted by Ali, a promoter. After waking in hospital, she’s told that she’ll never dance again, but Houria is even more determined to achieve her dream. Mounia Meddour, whose Papicha wowed audiences at Cannes, returns to the director’s chair and, paired with Lyna Khoudri’s brilliant and physical performance as Houria, crafts a film that is at once devastating and uplifting.
Director Biography
Born in 1978 in Moscow, Mounia Meddour originally trained as a journalist before turning to filmmaking. She is the director of the documentaries La cuisine en héritage (2010) and Cinéma algérien, un nouveau souffle (2011) and the feature Papicha (2019). Houria (2022) is her most recent feature.
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