In this absorbing, timely film, leading Algerian filmmaker Merzak Allouache (portrayed by the actress Salima Abada, also appearing in The Blessed) asks a range of fellow Algerians—educated and older, less educated and younger—about their views of what happens in the afterlife. There’s a particular interest in a dangerous, alluring promise that’s made to recruit young men to jihad: that martyrs for Islam will each be received in paradise by 72 beautiful virgins. Interweaving documentary interviews with a dramatized black-and-white road trip around the country, Allouache has made an original work that is “both chilling in its implications and heartening in presenting intelligent Algerians who see clearly through the propaganda” (Hollywood Reporter).