Fatima Ben Saïdane
The film tells the story of a man, Aly, in need of a child, back in his native country to marry his first cousin - a marriage arranged by their respective parents.
In late 2013, Zina and Djo, both in their twenties, come back to Tunisia from the Syrian front where they were sequestrated and raped. Zina was separated from her two-month-old child and Djo finds out she's pregnant and plunges into mutism and expresses her Syrian horror only in the novel she is writing. Tunisian lawyer, Nadia and Dora, a humanitarian doctor, assist them in their hard and lengthy reconstruction; impeded by the violence of their close circles, the harsh view on the social networks and their angst. Nadia, also Driss' lawyer, a 21-year-old persecuted homosexual who's been banned from all school establishments, asks him to help Zina in the hopes that their stirring meeting will allow them to open their black boxes, to assume themselves and stand up to the unjust society.
A new cinematic vision puts the psychological and social disintegration of family relationships under the microscope. The decline of human feelings in front of the tyranny material force and the breakdown of family ties open the door to opportunism and greed in order to acquire more money, causing the killing of human feelings and turns members of one family to enemies.
The death of a prince brings a young woman back to the palace where she was born into servitude. The lingering legacy of the harem is brought into light from behind frosted windows and velvet curtains.
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.
A fiction feature exploring what it means to be born an intersex person in Tunisia. Shams must live in the shadows. At 23, life is steeped in secrecy and an unimaginable pain. Stripped of the right to exist, Shams is shunned by true love and rejected by society's rigid norms and expectations.
