Women's issues are still one of the most difficult issues in the Arab world, especially in cinema. But Tunisian director Hind Boudjemaa addressed a thorny issue in her latest film, "Noura Tilam" starring her fellow Hind Sabri, among many issues that are not heard in Arab society, and in the working-class environment that rarely appears in Tunisian cinema.
The movie is about "Noura", a working woman, and a mother of three children, who is struggling to earn the livelihood of her children, after her husband was imprisoned in cases of theft, murder and fraud, but she also fights for her happiness, and for her right to freedom and choice, under difficult circumstances.
After her husband's imprisonment, Noura meets "Saad", who is played by the actor "Hakim Boumsaudi" and decides to divorce her husband, due to his imprisonment and multiple crimes, but days before the divorce, the husband "Lotfi Abdali" is released with a presidential pardon, and he is surprised by her head at her workplace.
Hind Sabri starred in the role of the woman who cannot tolerate her husband, humanly or emotionally, and does not try to hide those feelings from him. In this part of the film, the father's contradictions, who appear kind to his children, despite his impatience, and his capricious temperament, are shown in this film. Noura does not find the right moment to tell her husband about her desire to divorce, until he finds out the truth, so the violent side of his personality appears, and he takes revenge on Noura and Saad cruelly and brutally.
The film does not present angels and demons, nor does it offer absolute judgments, but it does present human aspects of each of the film's characters, so that the viewer may sympathize with the cruel person in some of his reactions, depending on the context of the story.
Unusual insights
The director dissects the unequal relations between males and females, as well as the irrationality of emotional relationships, thanks to a text based on a true story, and paints an accurate picture of Tunisian society that does not often appear in the media, and displays issues of community violence, police corruption, and male domination, in addition to Shedding light on the society's negative view of the prisoner's relatives and children, and his lack of acceptance of him after his release from prison, which causes him to continue to criminalize.
The movie did not come as romantic as the viewer imagined before continuing to watch it, but it came realistic in his cruel story, oscillating between dream and reality in the narration method chosen by the director to tell the details of the story, in addition to the market language that she chose in many of the film's scenes, which brings us back to an ancient dialectic of Ways to present reality in the cinema, does the director present reality as it is, or makes it more beautiful and less harsh through his own vision.
Without provisions
The director tries to present the case without judgments on her to the heroine, as she made a film without any hints or evaluation of the characters, and painted the three characters in balance, and focused on the woman who breaks the usual stereotype in Arab cinema about the fortieth woman.
The two men have an important and necessary presence within the context of the movie narration, although they differ, but both always put her in recurring problems.
The film suddenly ends without gradual suggestions, near the end, and Noura wakes up from the dream, on the ringing of the phone, without knowing as the viewers from the caller, nor where the dream began and the reality ended, to leave the director open to all the different possibilities, according to the decision of each viewer.
About the director
She started her career, during the Tunisian revolution in 2011. She says in a previous media talk about the revolution, "When your country goes through this kind of change, it has an effect on the collective unconscious, and you realize that everything is possible, and that includes all the things you want for yourself. Want Everyone was different at the time, and for me it was my wish to make movies. "
"I started in the least exciting period of a woman's life, when she was in her forties, the world looked at her as a mother, and someone with duties towards his family. At that time I decided to follow my dream, which has been postponed for more than 20 years."