A few months before the revolution in Tunisia, 18 year-old Farah has a passion for life and sings in a political rock band. Her mother, knowing the dangers of Tunisia, wants her to pursue a career as a doctor.
Hedi, a young man with great dream, is struggling his way through social conventions in Tunisia. While his mother tries to decide his life for him, Hedi meets Rim and suddenly he discovers that his world goes beyond and above conventions.
Director:
Mohamed Ben Attia
Stars:
Majd Mastoura,
Rym Ben Messaoud,
Sabah Bouzouita
Sami and Sara, a Tunisian couple in their thirties, lead a peaceful life and seem happy, until a tragedy befalls. BORDERS OF HEAVEN is the story of an ordinary family whose life takes a ... See full summary »
Director:
Fares Naanaa
Stars:
Lotfi Abdelli,
Anissa Daoud,
Sophie Ghodhbane
A coming-of-age comedy/drama set in Tunisia. Twelve-year-old Noura is an impressionable boy who must learn to reconcile two conflicting worlds - the loving world of Muslim women and the ... See full summary »
Director:
Férid Boughedir
Stars:
Selim Boughedir,
Mustapha Adouani,
Rabia Ben Abdallah
Summer, 1967. La Goulette, the touristic beach of Tunisi, is the site where three nice seventeen-year-old girls live: Gigi, sicilian and catholic; Meriem, Tunisian and Arab; Tina, French ... See full summary »
Director:
Férid Boughedir
Stars:
Sonia Mankaï,
Ava Cohen-Jonathan,
Sarah Pariente
Ten year old Jemenite girl asks a judge in Sana'a to grant her a divorce from a horrible marriage, after she was married away to prevent a public scandal after a rape of her sister.
Director:
Khadija Al-Salami
Stars:
Adnan Alkhader,
Rana Mohammed,
Reham Mohammed
The Nazi occupation of Tunisia strains the bonds of friendship between a Muslim woman and a Sephardic Jewish woman who are both preparing for their marriages.
A young Tunisian woman arrives illegally in France following her escape from Tunisia'sJasmine Revolution. As she struggles to adapt to her new reality,she faces both danger and hope. This ... See full summary »
Moufida, Mother of 3 boys known for their bad reputations (Badr, Bayrem and Brahim), finds her lover, after twenty years, who wants to know who is his son among the three.
Every day Nawara goes to work along a path that takes her between the alleys of the poor neighborhood and the roads that lead to the villas within a luxury compound. Every day, on her way ... See full summary »
Director:
Hala Khalil
Stars:
Menna Shalabi,
Ameer Salah Eldin,
Ahmed Rateb
During a student party, Mariam, a young Tunisian woman, meets the mysterious Youssef and leaves with him. A long night will begin, during which she'll have to fight for her rights and her ... See full summary »
Director:
Kaouther Ben Hania
Stars:
Mariam Al Ferjani,
Ghanem Zrelli,
Noomen Hamda
Tunis, summer 2010, a few months before the Revolution: Farah, 18 years-old, has just graduated and her family already sees her as a future doctor. But she doesn't think the same way. She sings in a political rock band. She has a passion for life, gets drunk, discovers love and her city by night against the will of her mother Hayet, who knows Tunisia and its dangers too well.
In a scene when Farah talks with her father in a restaurant in the background we can see Nouri Bouzid who is the father of Layla Bouzid and he is also a famous director in Tunisia. See more »
"As I Open My Eyes" is a story about tense political situation (before Arab Spring) without a political message. It would have been too easy to dramatize this coming-of-age -story with extreme episodes of resistance against Tunisian totalitarianism, just before Jasmine Revolution in 2011. Instead, we follow quite familiar narrative that could happen' anywhere in Europe: young multi-talented woman, Farah has to decide if she wants to become a rock singer or to agree with her mother and go to medial school.
Most of the conflicts in this narrative are inside the family. Only lately do we understand, as well as Farah, that her career as a rock-singer has been protected by a family friend. When the real political situation is exposed and the band has to stop performing, the bigger conflict with the totalitarian police forces is even too familiar from many similar movies. It seems to be very difficult to find the right tone for this kind of situation: to show the psychological effects without exploitation of the subject and female characters. This film is trying to find a compromise between psychological and political realism, but there are too many characters in the way.
The last third part of the film is kind of lame considering what we have seen before, and there are some loose strings in the background story of Farah's parents, but still it's a film that will widen your cultural horizon a lot. The wild and beautiful songs that Farah sings are reason enough to see this movie.
10 of 12 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
| Report this
"As I Open My Eyes" is a story about tense political situation (before Arab Spring) without a political message. It would have been too easy to dramatize this coming-of-age -story with extreme episodes of resistance against Tunisian totalitarianism, just before Jasmine Revolution in 2011. Instead, we follow quite familiar narrative that could happen' anywhere in Europe: young multi-talented woman, Farah has to decide if she wants to become a rock singer or to agree with her mother and go to medial school.
Most of the conflicts in this narrative are inside the family. Only lately do we understand, as well as Farah, that her career as a rock-singer has been protected by a family friend. When the real political situation is exposed and the band has to stop performing, the bigger conflict with the totalitarian police forces is even too familiar from many similar movies. It seems to be very difficult to find the right tone for this kind of situation: to show the psychological effects without exploitation of the subject and female characters. This film is trying to find a compromise between psychological and political realism, but there are too many characters in the way.
The last third part of the film is kind of lame considering what we have seen before, and there are some loose strings in the background story of Farah's parents, but still it's a film that will widen your cultural horizon a lot. The wild and beautiful songs that Farah sings are reason enough to see this movie.