Hidden Beauties

The second Gulf War from 1990 to 1991 represents in the collective Arab memory a turning point in regards to the Arab nationalism’s self-perception as well as a moment of deep historical and existential insecurity. Five Arab directors discuss the events from their personal perspective.

In the ensuing days before his wedding bridegroom Hachemi faces both the anxieties of the future and the shadows of the past. His best friend, Farfat, is the topic of street graffiti and local gossip, which calls his manhood into question. This ripples out to affect Hachemi for, unbeknownst to anyone, as apprenticed youths they were molested by Ameur, the local carpenter. Farfat is banished from his father's home and the shared secret between the two friends threatens to undo more than just the wedding, but their very lives.

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.

The 40-year-old Omrane is in charge to find maid placements in Tunis for the girls from his village. But the most rebel of the girls has escaped and he has to look for her to get her back in the right path. The girl refuses to lose the freedom she just obtained. For her part, the young Fedlah who was enthusiastic by going to town quickly discovers a world where childhood doesn't belong to.

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.

Caleb, "son of nobody" (Enrico Montesano) lives in Galilee in Jesus' day and struggles as a thief and con-man, pretending to be a magician. When he witnesses Jesus turning water into wine, he thinks he's found a competitor. So Caleb goes on, convinced that Jesus is a fake just as he is, always trying to figure out his tricks. In the meantime, he gets involved with a prostitute (played by Edwige Fenech), but also with the wife of a Roman patrician (played by the equally alluring Bernadette Lafont), he steals a few goats and cons a few people, he befriends a lovable dog and gets in trouble with some Roman soldiers.

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.

Three well-educated North African women cope with sexual stereotyping in modern Tunisia. Amina a married Muslim woman living in Tunis with her two daughters. Even though she is allowed certain freedoms as a Muslim woman this is curtailed when she meets her old friend from school Aida.

A Tunisian breakdancer falls in with fundamentalists with designs to turn the young man into a suicide bomber.

Baba Azizi is an old man, who moves all the time between his children's houses until he ends up at his daughter's house, and there comes a whole new problem waiting for him.

Youssef Soltane, a 45-year-old Tunisian intellectual, is the product of a generation that lived the era of euphoria and great ideologies in the sixties, and their subsequent failure. He was incarcerated and tortured for his political opinions. Furthermore, his relationship with Zineb, a young, beautiful bourgeois, only brings him more trouble. During one long winter night, Youssef wanders in search of an emotional haven, prey to all the questions that flood his memory.

An 18 year old on the island Djerba, Aicha, is married to Said, who works in Tunis for much of the year. Aicha breaks with tradition and decides to join Said in Tunis, weaving rugs to make money. Said asks that she give him a son, so Aicha lives under the rule of her mother-in-law.

Fred, a photographer, is in Tunisia to report on the « Bezness » (male prostitutes). Thanks to Roufa, Fred will discover this surprising environment where young men are confronted with the contradictions between tradition and modernity.

In late 2013, Zina and Djo, both in their twenties, come back to Tunisia from the Syrian front where they were sequestrated and raped. Zina was separated from her two-month-old child and Djo finds out she's pregnant and plunges into mutism and expresses her Syrian horror only in the novel she is writing. Tunisian lawyer, Nadia and Dora, a humanitarian doctor, assist them in their hard and lengthy reconstruction; impeded by the violence of their close circles, the harsh view on the social networks and their angst. Nadia, also Driss' lawyer, a 21-year-old persecuted homosexual who's been banned from all school establishments, asks him to help Zina in the hopes that their stirring meeting will allow them to open their black boxes, to assume themselves and stand up to the unjust society.