Voices

Anissa Kaki is a 30-year-old Parisian theatre-maker, and Algerian Takia's granddaughter. In a piece based on her childhood memories, she evokes her grandmother's world. Whilst imitating how Takia prepared her mahjouba, she talks about the latter's smell and flavour – lent to it by grandmother's hands – which changed when they started to lose their strength. A tender portrait of two women and their mutual love, Mes voix also describes the contours of a sometimes painful chasm between generations and cultures. It proves easier for Anissa to speak of Takia's past than of her own future, which granny has some entrenched ideas about. Time almost stands still for Takia, while Anissa sometimes wishes she could return to the time when her own and her grandmother's lives were still seamlessly aligned. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)