Portal:African cinema/Selected score/29

Across the Sea (French: La mer au loin) is a 2024 drama film, directed by Saïd Hamich Benlarbi. The film premiered in the Critics' Week program at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where it was a nominee for the Queer Palm. In next screens in competition at the Marrakech International Film Festival in December.

Told as a triptych with each chapter named after one of the three main characters, the film centers on a love triangle that develops between Nour (Ayoub Gretaa), a young man from Morocco who came to Marseille as an illegal immigrant in the 1990s; Serge (Grégoire Colin), a closeted bisexual police officer; and Noémie (Anna Mouglalis), Serge's wife.

Raï, a popular genre of Algerian music, plays throughout the film and is integral to the story according to Hamich:

"Raï music was one of the main driving forces behind this project. Since it experienced its golden age in Marseille in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was important for me to root this music (and the city of Marseille) in the present and in the daily lives of my characters. Raï went into exile in France, and even "reinvented" itself through exile. Many of the songs deal with these themes in a very direct way... when one is in exile, there’s often a very strong, archaic, and powerful relationship with the music of one’s origins. When I was writing the film, raï was both an ally and a compass, helping me find the right balance between the social and the melodramatic."