LA
PETITE JERUSALEM
LITTLE JERUSALEM |
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Director:
Karin Albou
Screenplay:
Karin Albou
Cast:
Laura: Fanny Valette
Mathilde: Elsa Zylberstein
Ariel: Bruno Todeschini
Djamel: Hedi Tillette de Clermont-Tonnerre
Mother: Sonia Tahar
Awards:
SACD Screenwriting Award, Cannes Film Festival (2005)
Running time: 96’
Production: France, 2004
Rating: Not Rated
Gauge: 35mm, DVD (color)
Distributor:
Kino International
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“Her
[Karin Albou’s] camera prowls, nimble and alert,
attentive to the heft and texture of things. Close attention
is paid to sound design, physiognomy and the suggestive
capacities of unpredictable edits.”
Nathan Lee, The New York Times |
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La Petite
Jerusalem is the nickname of Sarcelles, a low-income
housing neighborhood near Paris. Among the high number of
Jewish immigrants who live there, a Tunisian family of eight
shares a cramped apartment: Laura (a French-born, 18-year-old
student), her sister Mathilde, their mother, Mathilde’s
husband Ariel, and the couple’s four children. Independent
and strong-willed, Laura refuses Ariel’s orthodoxy and
her mother’s superstition. Instead, she throws herself
into the study of Kant which leads her to take evening walks.
On one such walk, she meets an Algerian-Muslim immigrant named
Djamel. While Laura’s life is disrupted by their love
affair, her sister Mathilde finds out that her husband is
cheating on her. Mathilde turns to a religious counselor who
opens her eyes to the possibility of sexual pleasure within
marriage and to the different ways in which religious faith
can be enacted. Her struggling marriage is revived, but Laura’s
relationship with Djamel becomes complicated by his family’s
disapproval of her. All this is taking place while tensions
between Muslim and Jewish communities are rising. In her first
feature film, Karin Albou delicately depicts the intimate
lives of two women while raising questions of religious interpretation,
freedom, sexuality and family relationships.
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| PHOTO Kino International
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