The amazing and involving story of a young Algerian woman with mutiple sclerosis, Letter from Childhood uses a mixture of ethnographic observation, reconstruction and personal reminiscence to tell its story.

Constructed from a series of fragments of her life the story is given coherence by the understated and matter-of-fact narration of the young women who speaks of the role of magic, and the position of women, in traditional culture, of coping with her disease and her hopes for a child.

From very simple images and a simple, elliptical narration the film fashions a story with great power and is one of the highlights of the documentary strand of the Festival. (PH)