Chergui Kharroubi

Algerian director living in Brussels, Chergui Kharroubi was born in 1953 in Hamr el-Ain, a small village 70 kilometers West of Algiers. The son of a a baker, young Chergui studied in his village first, then in the Blida high school. He later studied sociology at the Algiers College of Human Sciences before going to Belgium where he attended Institut des Arts de Diffusion, the film school of Brussels. He soon became a respected documentary maker, working mainly for the Belgian national channel RTBF, but occasionally going freelance. Among his most successful documentaries, let's mention "Sauve qui peut la nuit", a striking night chronicle of the life and death of old age patients in a Belgian hospital, "A nos amours", dealing with the tricky subject of the disabled's right to sex life and "Itinéraires Masarat" examining the Palestinian issue.In 2009 he succeeded William Klein when he was entrusted with the making (four decades after the master) of a documentary on the second Algiers Panafrican Festival. He is also the author of a TV film Les Fripiat (1987), but generally prefers reality to fiction.