A Glance at Cannes: A Focus on North Africa

At the Marché du Film at the Cannes Film Festival, in a tribute to the "Arab Spring" in North Africa, Egypt is the Guest of Honor, with a Special Focus on Tunisia.

Screenings will be held of Zelal by Marianne Khoury and Mustapha Hasnaoui (Egypt) and Ni Allah Ni Maître/Neither Allah nor Master by Nadia El Fani (Tunisia).

Synopsis of Films

Zelal by Marianne Khoury and Mustapha Hasnaoui

A journey into the enclosed world of two of Cairo’s mental hospitals, Zelal draws us into the day-to-day life of “ordinary” madmen and women. The film lays bare the shattered humanity of people abandoned without hope, left to stumble about in the backwash of life’s misfortunes. In the process, the viewer confronts his/her own demons, with the disturbing realization that the mentally ill are actually extensions of society’s madness.

Ni Allah Ni Maître by Nadia El Fani

August 2010: Tunisia is in the middle of Ramadan under Ben Ali’s régime. Despite the weight of censorship, Nadia El Fani films a country which seems open to the principle of freedom of conscience and liberal in its relationship to Islam… Three months later, the Tunisian Revolution breaks out, Nadia is out in the field. While the Arab World enters an era of radical change, Tunisia, which initiated the wind of revolt, is once again a “laboratory country” for its outlook on religion. And what if, for once, by the will of the people, a Muslim country opted for a secular constitution? Then, Tunisians would really have made Revolution.