The Chibanis – Bitter Bread: Algerian pensioners’ struggle in France

These are the emotional stories of Algerians caught up in French government pension rules that make it hard for them to retire with their families back home.

They’re called ‘chibanis’ – meaning ‘white-haired’.

From the 1950s, France recruited hundreds of thousands of North Africans to work on rebuilding the country after World War II. But social security laws now require them to live at least six months of the year in France, to continue to draw the benefits they rely on in old age.

This documentary looks at their often bleak lives, plagued by illness, loneliness and bureaucracy, through the eyes of three elderly Algerians living in Marseille.