Winner of the Best First Feature at 2016’s Berlinale, this sensitive, absorbing drama is set in the historic Islamic city of Kairouan, in contemporary Tunisia. Hedi is a dutiful young man working as a car salesman. Apart from his passion for drawing and comics, Hedi is passively going through the motions of a life that his domineering mother Baya has laid out for him. This includes an impending arranged marriage to the docile, incurious Khedija. Then, on a business trip he meets Rim, an activities coordinator for a resort hotel. Rim is everything Khedija is not: independent, ambitious, worldly, free-spirited. For the first time in his life, Hedi sees a possibility to escape the suffocating dictates of his mother, and to pursue his passions on his own terms. But can he turn his back on deep-seated tradition and family obligation? Like an entire generation of post-revolution Tunisians, Hedi is torn between the old forces of social convention and the heady, seductive pull of liberation. Majd Mastoura won Berlinale’s Silver Bear for his portrayal of the conflicted Hedi.
