A number of movie stars lined up on a small theater in the city of Bizerte in northern Tunisia, marking the launch of a special and unique cinematic show.
Some guests talked about the importance and symbolism of this step. The audience was prisoners of the notorious Burj Al-Roumi prison, with the number of officers and workers in the prison, and the third of them were the heroes of the film and its workers.
The story of the film revolves around Judge Fawzi, who unjustly rules the accused, Mistari, in the case of smuggling fabricated antiquities, so that the latter spends 10 years of his life behind bars, during which he loses his wife and his mother suffers from Alzheimer's disease.
Fate brings to the judge the news of his cancer, which turns his life upside down before he discovers that his medical papers were mixed with those of Mystery, and that this innocent accused had increased his misfortunes with an incurable disease.
Then Fawzi tries to ask forgiveness from him in every way in the Tunisian movie "Forgive Me" directed by Najwa Limam Salameh in 2018.
The most salient feature of the experience of Arab cinema screenings among prisoners is to ensure that the screening is followed by an open public discussion of the film.
That is, the prison turned for a moment from a house of punishment to a house of culture.
And it is a luxury that may be an imaginary thing in light of an Arab reality in a crisis of human rights and in which prisoners suffer in more than one Arab country
"Forgive Me" was shown at the Carthage International Film Festival at the time, as part of a unique initiative to show films to prisoners.
The drama of illness and imprisonment in the film was not different from the atmosphere that surrounded its production, which covered it with grief and tragedy, which added to its story other sad dimensions.
Director Najwa Limam Salama did not know that she had cancer while filming the movie, and that is why “Forgive Me” was her last work, and she died after it.
The work team also changed the title of the original film from "Fawzi and Mastari" to "Forgive me", which is the director's last words before her departure, to be more expressive of this atmosphere.
With this experience, Tunisian filmmakers were able to penetrate a fortress in the wall of artistic and cultural isolation to which prisoners are exposed, and to move the screen behind the walls during the past years.
It is an initiative that benefited about 14,000 prisoners, or nearly half of the prisoners in the country, in famous prisons such as Mornaguia, Masa'adin, Sidi El Hani and Burj El Roumi.
Especially since the latter was a fortress during the French occupation and then became known for its crimes against political prisoners during the era of the late two presidents, Habib Bourguiba and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, to the extent that he called it “the hell of the favorite dictator” and “the gates of death.”
Jordan and Morocco also have similar experiences through the presentations of the "Cinema for All" project between the Royal Jordanian Commission and the Public Security Directorate.
and the "Noureddine Al-Sayel Program for Film Clubs in Prison Institutions" project in Morocco.
These are initiatives that many Arab countries may not know, and that is why I was keen to mention 3 examples of different Arab countries from the Levant and the Maghreb, and not to foreign or Western countries, to make it clear that the experiment is not impossible and is not a form of madness.
The role of the screen behind the walls
The most salient feature of the experience of Arab cinema screenings among prisoners is to ensure that the screening is followed by an open public discussion of the film.
That is, the prison turned for a moment from a house of punishment to a house of culture.
It is a luxury that may be an imaginary thing in light of an Arab reality in a crisis of human rights, in which prisoners in more than one Arab country suffer from the absence of the basic ingredients for survival, not to mention that they think, or someone thinks of them, about the issue of cinematic shows and cultural discussions.
And here is the stall.
If we look at cinema and artistic debate as a means of luxury entertainment, any discussion of these issues can be postponed until the conditions of Arab prisons in general improve and the values of freedom, democracy and the rule of law prevail.
But if we look at cinema and cultural debate as a tool of awareness and liberation for the prisoner and the jailer, this is another matter.
In terms of rights and freedoms, prisoners have the right to knowledge and awareness, a right that is not separate from the right not to be tortured and to live humanely, whether inside or outside the prison.
Also, the main objective of the idea of imprisonment - even on a theoretical level - in the sciences of crime and punishment is reform and rehabilitation.
As for the security pretext of the danger of some prisoners or cases to gradual levels of deprivation, even if it is sometimes a right that is intended to be false, then the cinema tape solves this problem on the grounds that it is not a continuous broadcast like radio or television, and there is a way to control the content of the material presented in advance and to know it and see it.
This is not an acknowledgment of the authorities' right to confiscate prisoners' audio and video broadcasting equipment, but rather to remove the arguments that the authorities always use when raising such issues.
If we add to this that the vast majority of prisoners are already deprived of the Internet, and therefore cannot use platforms such as YouTube or Netflix, which is an almost complete isolation from the outside world that contradicts the idea of rehabilitation.
Therefore, the only way out and the effective solution is cinema in its traditional form as a projection machine, a screen and a dark hall, and these are possibilities that any prison can provide.
By the way, it is a means that not only the prisoner benefits from, but all the prison workers, including soldiers, officers, and others, benefit from it.
These people, although they appear to be free, spend most of their time inside the prison buildings, as they are de facto imprisoned most of their time, and the spread of such educational and awareness-raising means will help raise the awareness of these groups as well.
Not all of them have the time, the financial means, or even the desire to go to regular cinemas, let alone engage in cultural and artistic debate.
Many Arab countries have taken serious steps during the past decades towards reforming the criminal system and penal institutions, and the winds of politics have always blown these steps back to square one.
But at least at the level of legislation, education, study and reading have become part of the laws regulating prisons, and it is time for these legislations to be updated to include artistic education and raising awareness through various cinematic shows.