A deep dive into the reality of Algerian life and the heart of the revolutionary movement that shook the nation for a year.

From 2019 to 2020, demonstrators would gather twice a week in Algeria to peacefully protest a humiliating and corrupt political system. This "Revolution of Smiles," or the Hirak movement, took hold of the country a decade after the Arab Spring that had overlooked it.
After the COVID-19 pandemic brought a halt to the Hirak movement, this work revisits its first year to examine the transformations at work and the stakes of this unfinished revolution. It posits new perspectives for understanding how massive popular uprisings are able today to unsettle even the tightly locked-down authoritarian regimes in the early 21st century.