With his first film, Merzak Allouache accurately captured the daily realities of young Algerians living in the capitol city of Algiers fourteen years after the country had gained its independence from France. Omar Gatlato and his friends struggle with boredom, machismo and the impossibility of developing meaningful relationships with the women around them. Allouache's effective use of real settings and the dialect of the Algerian street made this film enormously popular with the Algerian movie-going public. The success of Omar Gatlato opened the door to a new group of films that were able to portray the daily realities of Algerian society. Two years after the success of Omar Gatlato, Allouache was able to direct the equally uncompromising Adventures of a Hero (1978), taking Algerian cinema further towards a new realism.