He gained international fame in 1976 by directing his first feature film Omar Gatlato which takes a cynical but realistic look at the alienation of men in Algerian society, which was selected at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes and won a Silver Medal at the Moscow Film Festival.[8] Then he directed Les Aventures d'un héros in 1978, a film about an Algerian father who falsely labels his infant son as the hero his tribe has been waiting for, which received the Thanit d'or at the Carthage Film Festival, and directed L'Homme qui regardait les fenêtres in 1982.