|
INCH'ALLAH DIMANCHE |
 |
Director:
Yamina Benguigui
Cast: Zouina: Fejri Deliba
Ahmed: Zinedine Soualem
Mme Manant: Marie-France Pisier
Mlle Briat: Mathilde Seigner
Aïcha: Rabia Mokedem
Mme Donze: France Darry
Bus driver: Jalil Lespert
Awards: FIPRESCI Award (for its sensitivity and fresh humour in dealing
with the conditions of Third World women, daily racism, and clashes between
cultures), Toronto Int’l Film Festival (2001).
Running time: 97 minutes
Production: France/Algeria, 2001
Rating: Not rated (general audience)
Gauge: DVD only (color)
Language: French & Arabic
Distributor: Film Movement
|
|
"Narrative
is often bittersweet but never dreary. Nicely rendered period design
jolts the viewer with reminders that provincial France in the mid-’70s
was still closer to WWII than to the present and that today’s
relatively harmonious multicultural society was hard won indeed."
Lisa Nesselson, Variety. |
|
|
|
|
For her first
foray into fiction, Yamina Benguigui, director of the documentaries
Women of Islam and Immigrant Memories, fashions
a poignant, often humorous portrait of an Arab woman’s
initiation into French provincial life in the mid-1970’s.
Algerian-born Zouina sets sail from Algiers with her mother-in-law
and her three young children to join her husband, Ahmed, who
works in northern France. Though married for ten years, Zouina
and Ahmed hardly know each other: he has only been able to
make short visits to Algeria. (Until 1974, French law forbade
immigrant workers to bring their families with them to France.)
It’s a cruel surprise therefore that Zouina’s mistrustful
husband virtually imprisons her in the house, while through
the radio and outside her front door she catches glimpses
of a forbidden freedom. Constantly harassed by her malicious
mother-in-law and forced to live under the suspicious gaze
of xenophobic neighbors, Zouina lives in exile in her own
home. Two local women befriend her - a young divorcée
turned feminist and a kindly Algerian war widow - and support
her in her quest for autonomy. With these reinforcements,
her own feisty character and sheer desperation she finds the
strength to confront her husband and an entire patriarchal
tradition.
|
|
|
| PHOTO Film
Movement |
|
|
|
