BEST OF FESTS

AÏCHA

2024 / 123 min / color

The main character of Mehdi M. Barsaoui’s film is Aya, a woman in her early twenties who lives in southern Tunisia. She feels trapped; decisions about her future are being made by everyone but her. Aya takes a minibus every day to work at a hotel in a nearby town, and one day it careens off the road and crashes. She’s the sole survivor, and she sees a chance for a new beginning — she decides to change her identity and flee to Tunis. There, under the name of Amira, she begins a new, independent phase of her life. But everything gets complicated when she becomes the primary witness to a mistake by the police: she will have to confront corruption and oppression from those in power. Barsaoui paints a portrait of the way women in Tunisia have to deal with not only family traditions, misogyny and sexism, but also oppression by the police and the state. The director provocatively asks whether the only way to achieve true emancipation in such a hierarchical and conservative society is through death. Aïcha, with an outstanding debut performance by Fatma Sfar, is a poignant and thoughtful story about the position of women in post-revolutionary Tunisia.