Mehdi Charef and the Politics of French Immigration

Three months after the publication of Mehdi Charef’s celebrated novel Le Thé au harem d’Archi Ahmed in 1983, the author was invited to make his own filmic rendition of the novel. Charef thus made his debut as director of his first feature-length film Le Thé au harem d’Archimède just two years later and to much critical acclaim. This article situates Charef’s rapid ascendance to celebrity by examining the ways in which the politics of French immigration in the mideighties played themselves out in the thematic and stylistic content of the film.