Cheb Mami - Music Planet - Indigo

Cheb Mami, a loner? Eric Sandrin built this film around this idea of solitude. A character trait to which we can add another form of solitude that the political situation in Algeria has forced Cheb Mami to endure: separation from his homeland as an irreparable absence. Whether delighting the audience at Paris' Zénith Theatre, fielding questions from journalists, talking with friends from the working-class Barbès neighborhood and Algerian intellectuals or dining with his eminent "colleagues" Idir, Zahounia, Sahraoui and Fadéla, the "King of Rai" staves off his solitude through an insatiable thirst for conversation. With Chab Mami, modern rai has gained brash new seductiveness and power. The portrait of a shy man transfigured by the limelight.