ABSTRACT: This study explores how Amazigh filmmakers in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia assert cultural agency through cinema amid postcolonial marginalization. Drawing on frameworks of visual and media sovereignty adapted from Indigenous studies, it analyses three films: Azul (Tunisia, 2013), Argu (Algeria, 2021), and Itto Titrit (Morocco, 2008). Through comparative analysis, the research identifies four interrelated strategies: linguistic reclamation via Tamazight dialogue, landscape representation affirming ancestral ties, strategic use of silence and sound, and gendered critiques negotiating cultural sovereignty and patriarchal norms. The films also employ non-linear temporalities and cyclical memory, challenging dominant chronological narratives. These formal techniques enable filmmakers to reclaim narrative authority and challenge dominant representations of North African cultures. By situating Amazigh cinema within larger conversations about Indigenous media and postcolonial cultural production, this study reconceptualizes Maghrebi national cinema and shows how common structural conditions produce similar forms of resistance.
Habiba Boumlik (Thu,) studied this question.