Qui a tué Ali Ziri? 2015. France. Directed by Luc Decaster. DCP. In French; English subtitles. 91 min.
In June 2009, a 69-year-old Algerian man died in the days following a traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil. While the cause of death was initially ruled heart failure, an independent review initiated under pressure from local activists revealed that Ali Ziri had been violently beaten in police custody. Documentary filmmaker Luc Decaster filmed the grassroots struggle for justice and accountability in the killing case—not as an outside observer, but as a participant in events that rocked his neighborhood community. Over the course of five years, Decaster’s camera takes us from street protests to organizing meetings and the labyrinthine halls of the French justice system (where the case was dismissed in 2016 and later appealed at the European Court of Human Rights). Unfolding in layers across time and space, Qui a tué Ali Ziri? bears witness to a life unjustly taken through a portrait of a system that enables police brutality and structural discrimination to endure with impunity.