São Paulo – It’s summer in Tunis, Tunisia’s capital. It’s 2010, a few months before the social uprising known as Jasmine Revolution that forced out president Ben Ali and the regime that ruled the country for more than twenty years. An 18-year-old woman named Farah just wants to perform with her rock ’n’ roll band, singing politically-charged lyrics, drinking and enjoying her youth. Her family’s plans, however, are others: they want her to go into medical school.
Using as background the period leading up to the protests that started the Arab Spring, the series of popular uprisings that shook the Arab world, the Tunisian director Leyla Bouzid shot her first feature film “As I Open My Eyes” (“A peine j’ouvre les yeux”), which opens this Thursday (12) in Brazilian theaters with distribution by Supo Mungam Films.
Released in 2015, the movie brings back a bit of the repressive environment of pre-revolution Tunisia, as highlighted by the director in an interview with journalist Maha Bem Abdelahim, made available by the distributor: “Many documentaries were shot, all of them full of hope and looking to the future. I also wanted to film. Not the revolution, but what everyone lived and suffered: the oppressive day-to-day, the police full power, the monitoring, the fear and paranoia of the Tunisian people in the last 23 years,” explains Bouzid.
The concerns shared by the family of the main character, especially her mother, Hayet, is exactly this: they know Tunisia and its dangers, therefore wish the best for her rebel daughter.
Born in Tunis in 1984, the director moved to Paris in 2003 to study French literature at Sorbonne and, following that, cinema at La Fémis. Before this movie, Bouzid directed four short films, with two of them performing well in French festivals.
“As I Open My Eyes” was seen in more than forty festivals throughout the world. It won the Label Europa Cinemas award and the BNL People’s Choice Award at the Venice Film Festival and the Muhr Award at the Dubai International Film Festival. It was also was selected as Tunisia’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards.
In Brazil, it opens in five cities: São Paulo (SP), Niterói (RJ), Porto Alegre (RS), Salvador (BA) and Vitória (ES).
Quick info
As I Open My Eyes (A peine j’ouvre les yeux)
Drama, Inappropriate for children under 14
Directed by: Leyla Bouzid
Cast: Baya Medhaffer, Ghalia Benali, Montassar Ayari, Aymen Omrani
Duration: 102 minutos
Showing: Espaço Itaú de Cinema Augusta (São Paulo), Guion Cinemas (Porto Alegre), Reserva Cultural Niterói (Niterói), Circuito Saladearte UFBA and Saladearte Cine XIV (Salvador) and Cine Jardins (Vitória)
Information: https://www.facebook.com/SupoMungam
Trailer: http://bit.ly/AssimQueAbroMeusOlhos_trailer
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
