Hélène Catzaras

Summer of 1967. La Goulette, a touristic beach of Tunisia, is the site where three seventeen-year-old girls live: Gigi, Sicilian and Catholic; Meriem, Tunisian and Muslim; Tina, French and Jewish. They would like to have their first sexual experience during that summer, challenging their families. Their fathers, Youssef, Jojo and Giuseppe, are old friends and their friendship will be in crisis because of the girls, while Hadj, an old rich Arab, would like to marry Meriem.

Twelve-year-old Noura dangles uncertainly in that difficult netherworld between childhood and adulthood. His growing libido has gotten him banned from the women's baths, where his mother took him when he was younger, but he's not yet old enough to participate in grown-up discussions with the men of his Tunisian village. Noura's only real friend is a troublemaker named Salih -- the village political outcast.

David has a woman he loves, two lovely young children, a band of friends with whom they go on holiday. But on his return from a stay in the Vosges, he is interrogated by the police in connection with an investigation into a murder. Quickly, it is established that David, under irreproachable looks, does not have a life as smooth as what he claims. Despite the support of his best friend, Noël, and his lawyer, Marco, the doubt spreads.

Aicha, a Tunisian mother gifted with prophetic dreams, lives in the isolated north of Tunisia with her husband Brahim and young son Adam. The family lives in anguish after the departure of the eldest sons Mehdi and Amine to the violent embrace of war. Months later, Mehdi unexpectedly returns home with a pregnant wife in tow. Mehdi's arrival triggers old wounds and a darkness that threatens to consume the entire village.

The death of a prince brings a young woman back to the palace where she was born into servitude. The lingering legacy is brought into light from behind frosted windows and velvet curtains.

In Tunisia, in the small village of Takrouna, Kassem dreams only of going to France just as construction begins on the Club du Soleil, a vacation camp for tourists.

Rich in environmental mood and ethnic color, this human drama chronicles the lives and rituals of a nomadic Berber tribe in the southern Tunisian desert, especially focusing on a son about to inherit the full mantle of leadership. When he sees that their sheep are threatened with a possibly devastating illness, the precarious nature of the group's existence is brought home to him and he leaves to gain a livelihood and knowledge in the city. Once he gets back, bringing money and presents, it first appears that the group will be assured of a better future because of his enterprising outreach. Yet military and governmental officials arrive on the scene to take a census and the young man is conscripted, against his will.

Recognizing no boundaries to her love, Angele manages to foment riots, rages and tragedy in colonial Algeria. Angele, an Algerian colonist with impeccably French origins, has fallen in love with Said, the assistant in her brother-in-law's bakery shop. Said is conscious of his Arab origins and traditions, and Angele has her work cut out for her if she wants to persuade him to marry her. Once she does, all hell breaks loose, as neither her European-origin peers nor Said's conservative Arab family approve of the union. When word of the proposed marriage gets out, strikes, violence and murder quickly follow, ruining not only Angele's life, but the lives of those around her. Her brother-in-law Paco, meanwhile, has been doggedly trying to get along and raise his family in an increasingly chaotic and difficult situation.