Didou

Have you ever dreamed of exploring an island or travelling to the moon? Do you yearn to race cars or talk to a friendly bear? No problem! Everything is possible with Louie! With his help and Yoko’s, you’ll learn how to draw while having fun!

Originally commissioned by the city of Algiers to promote tourism, Mohamed Zinet’s Tahia ya Didou blends documentary with fiction to create a poetic, acerbic and rapturous portrait of the director’s native city. The camera travels freely, through the port, market, streets and cafés, capturing everyday people, some of whom recur frequently enough to seem like protagonists. The nominal plotline follows a French tourist couple’s leisurely visit to the city, the man having previously served in the army during the Algerian war. As they walk around, his comments betray his mindset’s racist colonial prejudices, while his wife reiterates asinine clichés. Their unhurried wandering is interrupted when he comes across a blind man and realises that he tortured him during his army service. The film is punctuated with punchy sequences that show a poet named Momo delivering verse as an elegy for Algiers.

Louie and Yoko meet The Blue Knight who informs them that The Rainbow Fairy, keeper of all the colours of the world, has been kidnapped by the evil wizard Kroodle. Louie, Yoko and The Blue Knight set out to rescue The Rainbow Fairy. and thanks to the objects and animals that Louie draws with his pencils, the team manages to evade all the traps Kroodle lays in their path.

Louie and Yoko meet Tom, one of Santa’s elves. Tom has been chosen by Santa to help him on Christmas Eve but he suffers from vertigo, he’s afraid of the dark, and lacks an enormous amount of self-confidence. With his drawings, Louie is able to help Tom overcome his fears in an adventure that leads them to Santa’s Grotto, where the elves make toys.