Antonio Puigjané, El Piru
For 3 years, the director follows the daily life of four young people from the city of Sidi Bou Zid. Between their aspirations for real change and harsh reality, but always with art as a vector of lif…
Antonio Puigjané, El Piru
For 3 years, the director follows the daily life of four young people from the city of Sidi Bou Zid. Between their aspirations for real change and harsh reality, but always with art as a vector of life in motion, the film paints a mosaic of dreams that has been mutating since the events of 2011. —brahamdali Chafi, Ferid, Abdelhak and Boujdik are four young men who went out into the streets at the time, full of hope. Two years later they find themselves caught in a daily struggle between irrepressible energy and unbearably motionless, repressive « normalization ». Ridha Tlili followed them with his camera from 2013 to 2016 to paint a very sympathetic portrait of his protagonists. The film reveals their human and philosophical depth in the midst of bleakness, their dreams and sense of humor: « Broke but well dressed. » The group fight against getting worn down by unemployment, against the slow suffocation of the revolution and the obstructions to a normal relationship with women. They found a theatre group, make music and organize political actions in the streets. Philosophising and making youthful jokes, the four are wintering in their backrooms, in the grocery store and on walks through the Wadi landscape outside the city. Unemployed, constantly repressed by the state, considering to quit a country which denies equal opportunities and confines them in a perennial marginalization, the men find in theatre their own way to deal with reality. Performance merges with their daily lives and, as a consequence, with the plot of the film itself. The Arab Spring is wintering in Sidi Bouzid. The town in the Tunisian interior seems provincial and insignificant. But at the turn of 2010/2011 the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi and the ensuing protests of hundreds of young people against the arbitrariness of the authorities made it the starting point of a departure that was to challenge a number of autocracies in the Arab world. Chafi, Ferid, Abdelhak and Boujdik are four young men who went out into the streets at the time, full of hope. Two years later they find themselves caught in a daily struggle between irrepressible energy and unbearably motionless, repressive "normalisation". Ridha Tlili followed them with his camera from 2013 to 2016 to paint a very sympathetic portrait of his protagonists. The film reveals their human and philosophical depth in the midst of bleakness, their dreams and sense of humor: "Broke but well dressed!" The group fight against getting worn down by unemployment, against the slow suffocation of the revolution and the obstructions to a normal relationship with women. They found a theatre group, make music and organize political actions in the streets. Philosophising and making youthful jokes, the four are wintering in their backrooms, in the grocery store and on walks through the Wadi landscape outside the city.
Antonio Puigjané, El Piru
Documentary
Film Details
For 3 years, the director follows the daily life of four young people from the city of Sidi Bou Zid. Between their aspirations for real change and harsh reality, but always with art as a vector of life in motion, the film paints a mosaic of dreams that has been mutating since the events of 2011. —brahamdali Chafi, Ferid, Abdelhak and Boujdik are four young men who went out into the streets at the time, full of hope.
Two years later they find themselves caught in a daily struggle between irrepressible energy and unbearably motionless, repressive « normalization ». Ridha Tlili followed them with his camera from 2013 to 2016 to paint a very sympathetic portrait of his protagonists. The film reveals their human and philosophical depth in the midst of bleakness, their dreams and sense of humor: « Broke but well dressed.
» The group fight against getting worn down by unemployment, against the slow suffocation of the revolution and the obstructions to a normal relationship with women. They found a theatre group, make music and organize political actions in the streets. Philosophising and making youthful jokes, the four are wintering in their backrooms, in the grocery store and on walks through the Wadi landscape outside the city.
Unemployed, constantly repressed by the state, considering to quit a country which denies equal opportunities and confines them in a perennial marginalization, the men find in theatre their own way to deal with reality. Performance merges with their daily lives and, as a consequence, with the plot of the film itself. The Arab Spring is wintering in Sidi Bouzid.
The town in the Tunisian interior seems provincial and insignificant. But at the turn of 2010/2011 the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi and the ensuing protests of hundreds of young people against the arbitrariness of the authorities made it the starting point of a departure that was to challenge a number of autocracies in the Arab world. Chafi, Ferid, Abdelhak and Boujdik are four young men who went out into the streets at the time, full of hope.
Two years later they find themselves caught in a daily struggle between irrepressible energy and unbearably motionless, repressive "normalisation". Ridha Tlili followed them with his camera from 2013 to 2016 to paint a very sympathetic portrait of his protagonists. The film reveals their human and philosophical depth in the midst of bleakness, their dreams and sense of humor: "Broke but well dressed!" The group fight against getting worn down by unemployment, against the slow suffocation of the revolution and the obstructions to a normal relationship with women.
They found a theatre group, make music and organize political actions in the streets. Philosophising and making youthful jokes, the four are wintering in their backrooms, in the grocery store and on walks through the Wadi landscape outside the city..