Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina's canonical 1967 film "The Winds of the Aures" depicts a rural farming family whose lives are destroyed by colonialism and war. The plot depicts the tragic plight of a mother who leaves her home in the Aurès mountains of eastern Algeria to search desperately for her son, a nationalist who has followed in his father's footsteps but been captured by the French army. Symbolically, the film uses the family to represent the fate of the nation: impoverished, exploited, but struggling to be free. The film won an award at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival for Best First Work.