A Tale of Love and Desire

Fiction, director: Leyla Bouzid, Tunisia/France, 2021, 103 min., Arab./Fr. with En. ST

22.4.2022 | 19.00 | Arsenal |
24.4.2022 | 21.30 | City Kino |

Ahmed (Sami Outalbali), 18, French with Algerian roots, grew up in the suburbs of Paris. At the university, he meets Farah (Zbeida Belhajamor), a young and energetic Tunisian girl, who has just arrived to Paris. While discovering a corpus of sensual and erotic Arabic literature he never imagined existed, Ahmed falls deep in love with Farah. Although he feels overwhelmed with desire, he will try his hardest to resist it. In this sensuous coming of age story, love and desire function as tools to destabilize Ahmed and to push him to question his identity, and through that the concepts of masculinity and Arab-ness shaped through the cultural traditionalism lens. For his role of Ahmed, Sami Outalbali was recently nominated for the 2022 César Award for Best Newcomer.