Finjan fil Bustan: Special Halloween Screening of Roqia (2025)

Join us this Halloween season for Finjan fil Bustan featuring a community gathering, Arabic coffee, and a screening of Yanis Koussim’s Roqia Celebrate the spooky season with a special Halloween edition of Finjan fil Bustan! Join us on Friday, October 30, from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM for an afternoon that blends warm community conversation, fresh coffee, and a psychological horror film screening. We will begin with our signature Finjan gathering—an open, welcoming space to connect, share warm drinks, and mingle before we dim the lights for our feature presentation: Algerian filmmaker Yanis Koussim’s critically acclaimed psychological horror film, Roqia (2025). Genre: Psychological Horror / Drama Language: Arabic with English Subtitles A mysterious car accident leaves a young father with amnesia as he returns to his home village with a bandaged face at the peak of Algeria’s civil war in 1993. In the present day, an elderly Muslim exorcist is thrust into a losing battle with Alzheimer’s disease as his disciple begins to fear that his demise may unleash long-latent terror on their dwelling. Linking this diptych are shadowy visitors wreaking havoc with a gibberish language they whisper to the ears of the uninitiated. This strikingly unsettling debut feature from Yanis Koussim is one of the most accomplished Arab horror films ever made: a nightmarish vision of the lingering fears of the Algerian civil war (known as the Black Decade) that is part The Exorcist (1973) and part Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (1966). Realized with remarkable panache, the thematically rich Roqia is a foreboding treatise on collective trauma, repressed guilt, and the lurking violence of the everyday.