Between light and darkness stands Olfa, a Tunisian woman and the mother of four daughters. One day, her two older daughters disappear. To fill in their absence, the filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania invites professional actresses and invents a unique cinema experience that will lift the veil on Olfa and her daughters' life stories. An intimate journey of hope, rebellion, violence, transmission and sisterhood that will question the very foundations of our societies.
When a woman shelters a group of girls from suffering female genital mutilation, she starts a conflict that tears her village apart.
Tunisia, summer 2011. The holiday to the South of the country ends in disaster for Fares, Meriem and their 10-year-old son Aziz, when he is accidentally shot in an ambush. His injury will change their lives: Aziz needs a liver transplant, which leads to discovery of a long-buried secret. Will Aziz and the relationship survive?
Twelve-year-old Noura dangles uncertainly in that difficult netherworld between childhood and adulthood. His growing libido has gotten him banned from the women's baths, where his mother took him when he was younger, but he's not yet old enough to participate in grown-up discussions with the men of his Tunisian village. Noura's only real friend is a troublemaker named Salih -- the village political outcast.
To be able to travel to Europe and find the love of his life, Sam Ali, a Syrian refugee, accepts to have his back tattooed by one of the most sulfurous contemporary artist; becoming that way a precious work of art.
When Mariam, a young Tunisian woman, is raped by police officers after leaving a party, she is propelled into a harrowing night in which she must fight for her rights even though justice lies on the side of her tormentors.
Ali is a young Tunisian who dreams of a better life and ekes out a lonely existence selling contraband oil on the black market. When his father dies, he is forced to care for his two younger sisters who have been left to their own devices in a house from which they will soon be evicted. As he wrestles with the sudden weight of responsibility and the injustices he faces, anger and indignation stir within Ali – that of a generation still fighting to be heard more than a decade after the revolution…
Youssef Soltane, a 45-year-old Tunisian intellectual, is the product of a generation that lived the era of euphoria and great ideologies in the sixties, and their subsequent failure. He was incarcerated and tortured for his political opinions. Furthermore, his relationship with Zineb, a young, beautiful bourgeois, only brings him more trouble. During one long winter night, Youssef wanders in search of an emotional haven, prey to all the questions that flood his memory.
Tunisia, before the revolution. A man on a motorbike, razor blade in hand, prowls the streets of Tunis slashing women's buttocks. They call him The Challat, aka "The Blade", and the mere mention of his name provokes fascination and terror. Is he a lone criminal, an urban legend, or could he be the creation of a political group or religious fanatics? 10 years later, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, a stubborn young female director sets out on an investigation to unravel the mystery and discover the true Challat of Tunis...
The death of a prince brings a young woman back to the palace where she was born into servitude. The lingering legacy is brought into light from behind frosted windows and velvet curtains.
"At eight o'clock, it's Laila's birthday, okay?" Palestinian judge turned cab driver Abu Laila's wife reminds her husband. But on his young daughter's birthday, like any day, Abu faces a nerve-wracking shift in a Ramallah yellow cab armed only with an ex-jurist's misplaced pride, a father's loyalty, and a sticker reminding passengers that smoking and carrying AK-47s are prohibited. Rather than address politics or document holy war heroics and villainy, Laila's Birthday focuses on the toll that the unending Palestinian-Israeli conflict extracts from civilians clinging to both employment and a semblance of normal life amidst chaos and corruption, missile attacks and bursts of gunfire.
A community of people rejected by society live in an abandoned residence located in a "Medina": an old town in Tunisia. Al Bab, a local criminal running the residence's prostitution circle, returns from prison on his wedding day. Fraj, his brother and the town warlock, falls in love with Ramla, his brother's future wife: He is the only man of the residence who has seen her face, as she is kept prisoner in one of the rooms until the wedding night.
Done in the style of an African folk tale, this film, a collaboration between European and African countries, is said to be among the most elaborate, high tech film in African film. Exquisitely photographed and filled with archetypal figures to create a poetic look at nature's revenge against those who would exploit her. It is set in the forest village of Amanha Lundju, a place where the birth of children is celebrated by the planting of a tree. The trees are considered spiritual twins. But for every tree planted, the rapacious state destroys many more for firewood and lumber.
Amel is a young photographer. When she loses her husband, her life changes. Encouraged by her father-in-law, she takes a taste of life by photographing street boys. Without fear of being scandalous, she makes the choice to look at men as men look at women.
Aya, thirty-year-old Tunisian, lives in Tozeur, a city in southern Tunisia, at the gates of the desert. Between social diktats, conservatism and disillusionment, Aya is not the happiest girl in the world. One day, a misfortune befalls her. Aya doesn't know yet that this will be the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to her. An unexpected opportunity for this young woman who sees her life completely questioned.
Palestinian director Rashid Mashawari follows his widely acclaimed dark comedy Laila’s Birthday with this compelling and ironic drama about two brothers on the West Bank who, rendered homeless by an Israeli air strike, hustle odd jobs to raise enough money to emigrate to Canada.
Three well-educated North African women cope with sexual stereotyping in modern Tunisia. Amina a married Muslim woman living in Tunis with her two daughters. Even though she is allowed certain freedoms as a Muslim woman this is curtailed when she meets her old friend from school Aida.
Mohamed is a hardened shepherd living in rural Tunisia with his wife and two sons. Mohamed is deeply shaken when his oldest son Malik returns home after a long journey with a mysterious new wife. Tension between father and son rises over three days until reaching a breaking point.
Roufa is an attractive young man, and that works out well for him because he is a practitioner of "bezness:" he's a sex-for-hire boy for the tourists who come to Tunisia. His girlfriend deeply resents his having sex with other women but doesn't seem much bothered that a rich German man he's been having sex with is hoping to sponsor him in Europe. She also has a hard time with his tendency to behave like any other Arab male around a woman, telling her how to take care of her business. As it turns out, she's got better sense than any of the men around her.
A Palestinian filmmaker is writing a script in his New York apartment during the first Gulf war. As much as he tries to shut himself off from the exterior world, images of past wars in the Middle East come back to haunt him.
