Blurring the boundaries between reality and imagination, Narimane Mari's inventively fictionalised take on Algeria's war of independence won the top prize at the 2013 Copenhagen International Documentary Festival (CHP:DOX).

Fifty years after Algeria's independence from French colonialism, the country is still grappling with its identity. In Bloody Beans, the nation's past, present and future is told through the eyes of children, re-enacting and re-imagining their history and heritage through play.

Flocking across the city in an increasingly wild and strange night of fantastical and haunting games, the children go to war: painting their faces, invading homes, chasing off a man in a pig mask and capturing a French soldier. Using non-professional actors, Bloody Beans plays out like a hallucinatory Lord of the Flies that draws on the poetic realism of director Jean Vigo and the ethnofiction of anthropologist Jean Rouch to question cultural mythologies. Set to a pulsating electronic score, the result is an allegorical quasi-documentary unlike anything you've seen before.

"A radical, original and playful debut film … fresh and joyful." – CHP:DOX jury