Karin Albou's vivid and intelligent debut feature is set on the outskirts of Paris in a bleak neighborhood with a large Jewish immigrant population. Eighteen-year-old Laura lives there in a crowded apartment with her widowed mother, her older sister, her sister's husband and their kids. A gifted philosophy student and particularly drawn to the work of Kant, Laura has begun to question the beliefs of her orthodox, Tunisian-Jewish family. Problems in her sister's marriage, her attraction to an Algerian Muslim exile, and the upswing of anti-Semitic violence which touches frighteningly close to home, intensify the intellectual and emotional conflicts of a young woman coming-of-age. Like the brilliant French filmmaker Claire Denis, Albou depicts female desire and the female body with remarkable frankness and without any trace of prurience. In a fine ensemble cast, Fanny Vallette and Elsa Zylberstein as the sisters and Aurora Clement as an informal marriage counselor are outstanding. (Amy Taubin)

2005 Cannes Film Festival: Official Selection, Critics' Week

Director/Writer: Karin Albou
Producer: Isabelle Pragier, Laurent Lavole

After studying acting, dance, Hebrew, French literature and Arabic, Karen Albou enrolled in a film school in Paris. Her first short film, CHUT, was awarded the Cinécinéma Best First Film prize. After a documentary [MON PAYS M'A QUITTÉ], she chose to talk about Algeria, her father's homeland, in her second fiction AID EL KÉBIR, winner of the Grand Prize at the Clermont-Ferrand Festival. LITTLE JÉRUSALEM is her first feature film.