Karim Ainouz
Brighter Than The Sun (Plus éclatant que le soleil)










Karim Ainouz, a filmmaker who identifies as “accidentally Algerian,” documents his first trip to Algeria in his film Mariner of the Mountains, a cinematic letter to his late mother. Drawing from his love for voiceover storytelling, Ainouz creates films using his personal archive of analog photos and cellphone images, crafting narratives without a camera.
One such story is that of Abdel, an Algerian immigrant in France, whose life is shaped by France’s nuclear tests in colonial Algeria. Between 1960 and 1961, four nuclear tests, beginning with the powerful “Gerboise Bleue,” devastated Reggane, Abdel’s birthplace. His family suffered severe consequences, and as a child, Abdel witnessed the blinding brilliance of a detonation, leaving an indelible mark on his psyche.
In old age, haunted by memories, Abdel seeks help from a psychoanalyst in Paris. His narrative intertwines personal trauma with the broader aftermath of colonialism, offering a poignant reflection on memory as a tool to confront history and prevent its repetition. Ainouz’s work not only tells Abdel’s story but also illuminates the lingering scars of imperialism, blending personal and historical narratives into a powerful exploration of resilience and remembrance.
As an internationally acclaimed film director, screenwriter, and visual artist, Karim Aïnouz has built an extensive oeuvre ranging from award-winning cinematographic works to short films and installations. His work encompasses multitudes: contributions to queer experimental cinema, intriguingly complex leads, explorations of his biography as a Brazilian-Algerian-French filmmaker based in Europe. Ainouz’s eclectic and expansive work deliberately eschews the prescriptive approach to social and political themes that abound to this day in contemporary art and film. In a time where societal norms and political discourse are constantly evolving, he is not afraid of inhabiting contradictions. His work relates to Ernst Bloch’s concept of utopia as a critical and collective longing that is relational to historically situated struggles. Much of Ainouz's oeuvre could be read as an analysis of how queer belonging is performed in dire contexts and the political potentiality of authorial filmmaking.