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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Cinema sees revival in post-revolution Tunisia

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TUNIS: Tunisian film-makers are making the most of newfound freedoms to tackle issues banished for decades from the silver screen, prompting a post-revolution cinema revival.


“Since 2011, one of the most tangible benefits we’ve seen is the ability to talk about all topics, especially themes of society, our daily life, its complexity and its richness,” said producer Habib Attia.


“In cinema it pays to have that sincerity.”


Just two or three films a year were released during the 2000s, but the industry has rebounded since the 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.


A dozen feature films are now made each year and new cinemas are opening up.


Some 200,000 people flocked to the cinema this year to watch El Jaida by film-maker and activist Salma Baccar about the fight for women’s rights in Tunisia.


Such box office figures are the highest in 15 years, said Lassaad Goubantini, one of Tunisia’s leading film distributors.


Mehdi Barsaoui, a Tunisian director, said film-makers are “no longer forced to skirt” rules imposed by the former regime “through unsaid things and metaphors”.


His first feature film examines organ trafficking between Tunisia and Libya in the chaos after the two countries’ revolutions, which is being shot in Tunisian studios and the country’s south.


“It’s in direct speech and with a form of authenticity that allows universal stories to be told with a local stamp,” he said, while filming at a squalid dormitory for trafficked children.


“The renaissance is due to the closeness of the writers” to reality, Barsaoui said.


The country’s film-makers have also seen success abroad, with Mohamed Ben Attia’s Hedi, a love story set in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, picking up an award at the 2016 Berlin film festival.


Last year, Kaouther Ben Hania’s Beauty and the Dogs, about a Tunisian woman seeking justice after being raped, was screened at Cannes before its international release.


Tunisian directors are also turning their attention to a reality rarely talked about by government officials — the radicalisation of the country’s youth.


They include Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud’s Fatwa, due for release next year.


Ben Hania addresses the theme through the eyes of a father whose sons have gone to fight in Syria in My Dear Son, which was screened at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes.


— AFP


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