Benjamin Salama was born in 1952 in Chemini, Algeria. He studied at the French national film school IDHEC (Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques) before it became La Fémis. Afterward, the uncertainties of life led him to a career as a film critic for several Algerian and French specialist magazines, and later as a general-interest journalist at the national broadcaster, France Télévisions. He then came back to filmmaking, through historical documentaries for television. Even given the constraints of making films for television, he always chose topics and issues that resonated with his own sensibility as a citizen.