Rita Di Santo reviews Noura's Dream

After screening at the Toronto Film Festival, French-Tunisian filmmaker Hinde Boudjemaa’s Noura’s Dream had its Middle East premiere at the El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt.

The film tells the story of a working-class Tunisian woman who has an affair while her husband is in jail – something that would seem normal in another part of the world, but with Tunisia’s strict laws against adultery Noura can be jailed, at any time, for five years.

Working hard to look after her three children, Noura is caught between her responsibilities and her dream of divorcing her husband to marry the love of her life, Lassad. When her husband is unexpectedly released, everything comes to a head and love seems not to be a choice for a woman in a patriarchal society.

The movie carefully avoids sentimentalism, morals, and clichés, and digs deep in a fascinating portrait of an ordinary, modern woman. Noura is frail and insecure, and far from perfect, she is passionately true to herself and her fight for the freedom of her feelings is absolutely absorbing.

Popular Tunisian-Egyptian actress Hend Sabri plays Noura, giving a magnificent performance of a vulnerable woman who becomes a self-confident and independent person. Director Hinde Boujemaa creates an atmosphere of intimacy that resonates with meaning and sentiment, revealing a key understanding of filmmaking. Tunis becomes a place to tell a slow-burning universal story of women’s struggle.

Sharp dialogue brings a new dimension to facts and a new way of thinking. Boujemaa, who has previously made a documentary, establishes herself with this fiction debut, as one of the most thought-provoking voices in contemporary female filmmaking.

 Rita di Santo reviews Young Ahmed, which won the Best Director prize at Cannes recently 

Like Britain’s Ken Loach, Belgium’s most renowned filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne make movies bursting with concern for the struggles of the working class and the most vulnerable in society. Their protagonists often teenagers who find themselves in the midst of a dysfunctional economic system, misjudged and alienated. Young Ahmed, the Dardennes' latest, premiered to great acclaim at this year’s Cannes film festival, bringing the Best Director prize to the brothers.

The movie is about a 13-year-old Muslim caught between moral crisis and emotional change. Ahmed’s mother struggles to understand how, in only one month, his attention has turned from his PlayStation to the Koran, while a local extremist imam pushes him to follow the example of his cousin and become a jihadi fighter. His radicalisation leads him to refuse to shake hands with his thoughtful teacher Inès “because women are impure” and Inès’s boyfriend is “a Jew”, but Inès understands Ahmed - who is also affected by dysplasia. When Ahmed tells the imam that Inès teaches Arabic and Koranic verses using music, the imam denounces her and Ahmed responds with a violent assault. Arrested and committed to youth custody, where therapeutic treatments appear to be working miracles, he convinces the authorities that he’s sufficiently reformed for a “making amends” encounter with Inès herself. While in the custodial centre, Ahmed works on a farm where he meets another teenager, Louise. There is a spark, but when she kisses him, he is wracked with guilt. He asks her to become a Muslim so his sin will be less serious. But the tremors of love make him to lose control, and violence could again be his outlet.

It’s an intense drama rendered shocking by the youth of its violent radicalised protagonist, a child, an innocent, abandoned and manipulated. The conclusion shows the Dardenne brothers at their best. Their style is austere, methodical, simple, hand-held camerawork, use of available light, absence of non-diegetic music, the observation of everyday tasks, and a sense of moral weightiness centring on a taciturn protagonist.

The Dardennes offer no answers, but make clear who is to blame, casting the teenager as victim and revealing a series of abuses, including psychological abuse from the imam, who constantly lectures and manipulates Ahmed on how to live his life and what is a sin. Other institutions are cruel, such as the rehabilitation centre, which puts Ahmed to work on a farm, where though only 13 he is treated as an adult worker; or the psychiatrist who must determine if Ahmed “is a danger to society”.

The film alludes to some of the challenges of integration for Arabic-speaking child refugees. The form of Arabic taught comes from the Koran, which is ancient Arabic, but only modern Arabic, a completely different language, would help them get a job. They also need to master French, but few are familiar with the language. This movie provides a powerful insight into the life of a teenager that is both sympathetic and urgent.