The second annual Brussels International Film Festival (BRIFF) kicked-off in the Grand Eldorado movie theatre at UGC De Brouckère on Thursday night with a screening of It Must Be Heaven, the new film by acclaimed Palestinian director Elia Suleiman.

Suleiman stars as a fictionalised version of himself in this slapstick comedy, whose story often masks themes of great subtlety and, it must be said, frequently frustrating ambiguity.

Its basic plot can be neatly summarised: an old(ish), single, almost perpetually mildly bemused, and apparently virtually mute Palestinian man (Suleiman) sees a bunch of strange, faintly amusing stuff happen in his hometown of Nazareth. Subsequently, Suleiman flies to Paris, where he again sees a bunch of strange, faintly amusing stuff happen. Next, Suleiman travels to New York, where he once again sees a bunch of strange, faintly amusing stuff happen. Finally, Suleiman returns to Nazareth, where stuff is still strange and – you guessed it – stuff is still faintly amusing.

(The final scene of the film, however, is – almost meta-strangely – neither strange nor moderately amusingly: it consists of Suleiman sitting alone at the bar at a club in Nazareth, looking on inscrutably at a group of Palestinian youths as they ebulliently dance the night away. The interpretative significance of this scene is unclear, as is, in fact, the significance of much of the film.)

The putative intricacy of It Must Be Heaven, unsurprisingly, lies in its details, namely in why Suleiman travels to Paris and New York in the first place, and what he ends up seeing both at home and on his travels.

To start with the why: although the death of an unnamed close acquaintance and the mild craziness of (the fictionalised rendition of) everyday life in Nazareth are both key factors in his decision to travel to the West, the primary cause is Suleiman’s need to acquire funding for a film that he is making – a film which, in a paradoxical, self-referentially ironic twist, is also called It Must Be Heaven.

Suleiman, however, does not succeed in persuading a Western studio to produce his film. The rejection he receives in Paris is particularly amusing: he is told by a stereotypically arrogant French producer that, although his film company is “sympathetic to the Palestinian cause”, it nevertheless cannot fund Suleiman’s project because “the film could take place anywhere; it is not Palestinian enough”. This is one of the few points in the film where Suleiman’s near-permanent expression of mild bemusement noticeably transforms into something approaching scorn: he, a Palestinian, is being denied a cinematic platform by a European simply because he fails to conform to the latter’s Orientalist stereotype of what a “Palestinian” film should be.

Similarly, in New York, Suleiman is introduced by a friend to an American film producer. “He [Suleiman] is not a Palestinian from Israel, but a Palestinian from Palestine,” his friend says, before adding: “He’s a Palestinian filmmaker, but he makes funny films. His new film is called ‘Heaven Can Wait’. It’s a comedy about peace in the Middle-East.” All of these remarks are, at best, seriously misleading: Nazareth is a city in Israel, not Palestine; the title of the film is “It Must Be Heaven”, not “Heaven Can Wait”; the film is manifestly not “about peace in the Middle-East”; and, finally, the implication that Palestinian filmmakers are expected only to make non-comedic films is not only insulting, but also, one could argue, mildly racist.

It is here that we can also see the interpretative ambiguity inherent in so much of the film. To take (again) the example of Suleiman being described as “not a Palestinian from Israel, but a Palestinian from Palestine”: are we, the audience, supposed to mock Suleiman’s friend’s ignorance regarding Nazareth’s actual location? Or are we to interpret him as suggesting something else, namely that Suleiman is in some sense a real Palestinian, despite living in Israel? Or are we supposed to interpret him as making an overtly political statement: that all, or at least some, of what is legally part of Israel is in fact properly construed as being part of Palestine?

Regardless, the film encourages us to assume that Suleiman never receives Western funding to make his film – this very film. The intended message here seems clear: in order for a Palestinian to make his voice heard – his true voice, and not an Orientalised caricature thereof – he cannot ask for handouts from the Middle-East’s past or present colonial masters. (As it happens, though, It Must Be Heaven was actually produced by a collection of French, Canadian, German and Turkish film companies – which might suggest that Suleiman is being characteristically ironic here.)

Returning to the issue of what Suleiman ends up seeing: many of the comedic vignettes that Suleiman is a witness to, both in Nazareth and the West, are clearly intended to have interpretative significance. For instance, in Nazareth he observes two IDF soldiers driving a military vehicle while they continually swap sunglasses and narcissistically examine themselves in the car’s rear-view mirror, while utterly failing to take heed of the road ahead; meanwhile, in the backseat of the car sits a lonely, docile, blindfolded Palestinian woman. Similarly, in France, the enormous police presence and overall militarisation of society are repeatedly emphasised: we observe tanks rolling down outside the Banque de France; we witness policemen chasing suspects down streets on segways and roller-blades, and we even see policemen (amusingly) attempt to intimidate an old lady on a subway platform by walking very, very slowly behind her.

Finally – and arguably most symbolically – in New York there is a scene where a woman in Central Park, dressed in a white costume adorned with angel wings, removes her top to reveal the Palestinian flag drawn across her chest. Almost immediately, NYPD squad cars arrive on the scene to arrest her. When the police finally capture and smother her, however, she vanishes, Obi-Wan Kenobi-style, with only her angel wings remaining where she previously lay. Sometime later, however, on a night that looks like Halloween, she reappears, this time with her chest unexposed. A figure dressed as the Grim Reaper sees her, causing his face to contort with rage; the Reaper then stares threateningly across the street at Suleiman, a perpetual witness to this symbolic surrealism.

Though each of these three (sets of) scenes have obvious interpretative significance, it is, in fact, often frustratingly difficult to pin down what exact interpretative significance they are supposed to have. To take the case of the preening IDF soldiers: do they represent all Israelis, or merely the IDF, or only those fashion-conscious, consumer-obsessed youths that one often finds in the bars and clubs of Tel Aviv? Furthermore, is the fact that the Israelis fail to look at the road ahead of them at all relevant? (And is a literal – as well as metaphorical – car crash therefore inevitable?) And what is the significance, if any, of the Palestinian in the back of the car not only being a prisoner, but also being docile, lonely, a woman and blindfolded? On reflection, is Suleiman perhaps intentionally aiming for precisely such ambiguity? Or, when all is said and done, is he merely trying to be funny?

Much of this movie, however, consists of scenes that do not have any obvious interpretative significance. For instance, in Paris, Suleiman adopts a stray bird who happens to fly into his apartment. One afternoon, when Suleiman is trying to write on his laptop, the bird repeatedly tries to stop him from working by hopping onto his keyboard. At first, Suleiman swipes the bird away each time it approaches, but eventually he becomes frustrated, heads to the window, and points upward at the sky, clearly suggesting to the bird that it leave. After some deliberation, the bird acquiesces and flies away. Again: is this whole scene simply supposed to be mildly amusing? Or is it supposed to suggest something else, for example, that hosts inevitably tire of those they are hosting? Or is it, more speculatively, perhaps some kind of bizarre metaphor for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? It isn’t clear; indeed, whether or not this scene is intentionally ambiguous is itself inherently ambiguous.

Arguably, nowhere is the film’s ambiguity more pronounced than in its title: “It Must Be Heaven”. To what, exactly, is this “it” referring? Nazareth? Palestine? The world? Or is “it” only intended to refer to Suleiman’s fictionalised renditions of these places (e.g., a Paris where all the women are stunningly beautiful)? Or is “it” perhaps referring to the film itself, thus suggesting a form of escapism through film, one that is especially tailored to those Palestinians whose daily lives consist of ritual subjugation and humiliation? Come to think of it, is the title of the film even meant to be take seriously, rather than ironically? We simply don’t know; and Suleiman, it seems, is not at all willing to tell us.

Suleiman, however, has said the following: “If in my previous films, Palestine could be seen as a microcosm of the world, my new film, It Must Be Heaven, tries to present the world as a microcosm of Palestine.” But in what sense is the world, except in a trivial sense, a microcosm of Palestine? (Moreover, in what sense are Paris and New York collectively even a microcosm of the world?) Yes, it is of course true that in both Western and Middle-Eastern society mild craziness and amusement can be found in many different places. And yes, much of society – even Western society – is becoming increasingly militarised. But where in Europe or America is the equivalent of, say, Gaza, which for years has been subjected to a brutal and devastating Israeli-led blockade? Where is the equivalent of mass home demolitions? Of de-development? Where – the history of the native Americans excepted – is the equivalent of the dispossession, the annexation, the military occupation suffered by Palestinians?

Undoubtedly, It Must Be Heaven has its amusing moments. But insofar as it unambiguously says anything, what it says is at best a truism or, at worst, radically or even grotesquely false. To compensate for this, it seems, the films attempts to feign profundity by engaging in sustained ironic ambiguity – but, in doing so, it arguably ends up saying little of any interest at all.

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Set amid a civil war that has divided the United Kingdom, the opening scenes see the movie show chaotic footage of riots and chaos in the streets of British cities as the military-controlled state battles rebel militia for power. Flash to white, and a woman wakes up in a blindingly white cuboid room: the White Chamber. Discombobulated, she hears a voice demand information, but she claims to have none. This sees her captor utilise the gruesome functionality of the White Chamber as an instrument of torture. The woman is pushed to their limit and as she nears breaking point, a flashback that places us five days before, showing us the circumstances which lead us to this point.

Being small budgeted, it makes sense they would choose to film primarily in one location, and so most of the movie takes place within the white cube or the immediate outside which works as a lab for the observers. This scenario of a fixed location for small budget films is popular as you can break down the power that big-budget blockbusters have over movies and can focus on the nuances of the story and the creative play of camera to reach your audience. But here, White Chamber doesn’t deliver.

Characters were left undeveloped and thus their speeches felt impotent, summoning no emotional response to progression in stories. And those that did receive introspection were either given just enough exposition to further the plot or had totally unnecessary scenes or plot devices that had no effect on the story.

A saving grace for uninteresting dialogue could be the cinematography, and the film was creative at points; the lighting of the white cube makes for some interesting shots and sharp transitions. However, the creativity strikes like lightning rather than being an interestingly shot throughout, and thus didn’t do enough to compensate for many speech heavy scenes.

Overall, the movie felt like just a new setting for a classic idea: trapped person uses dialogue to engage audience; but it fell short of its goals to entertain. The overarching themes of division and vilification of the enemy to justify evil acts is a nice sentiment to try and reflect on. However, due to the poor pace and hollow characters, those notions were bypassed by me reflecting on the movie’s many problems instead.

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Yaguchi capitalises on the recognition comedy effect by in jamming together multiple genres. Survival Family plays on the conventions of disaster, road trip, family drama and coming-of-age movies. There are pastoral scenes of great natural beauty and the road-trip narrative combined with the forced return to a pre-industrial way of life encourages the audiences to appreciate the beauty of what lies beyond the city and hectic modern schedules.

Behind the film lurks the memory of the natural disasters that Japan has faced, not least the 2011 tsunami and the subsequent nuclear breakdown at Fukushima. There are scenes of mass exodus from the cities and potential riots as people let out their frustration on the police. At one point the family meets an army patrol who say they are marching from one nuclear power station to another to see if any of them will work. But this is only a setting and plays no large role in the narrative.

There is not much nuance in this film, but maybe there doesn’t need to be. The acting is exaggerated but humorous, there’s plenty of slapstick comedy and witty lines, and we get simple morals about the value of family life and a more simple, communal way of living. Ultimately Survival Family is a feel-good family movie, the sort you might watch on a plane or have on in the background while preparing dinner – unless, that is, you feel like living for a while without electronics!

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It is a simply-made film: the people interviewed speak straight to the camera and are situated in their homes or familiar places like the local pub or park, all around the country. There is no direct storyline and the audience is not led in any one direction.

“The referendum was a rare opportunity for people to say what they wanted to say,” says one of the characters. In fact, Brexit being as divisive as it is, it is rare to hear people saying what they think in a setting free from prejudice, and that is what makes Brexitannia valuable.

Of course, some of the characters seem to fit the stereotypes. One woman, in her deck chair in a suburban garden, describes how regulations apparently banning curly cucumbers alarmed her about absurd EU bureaucracy and made her want to leave.

There are racists, one man pointing to his white skin and saying, “English is this colour.” Yet there are also surprises: a Polish man who would have voted Leave if he could, a young female UKIP supporter who says she doesn’t trust right-wing media, a middle-aged man who admits to feeling “territorial” and seeing migrants as a “threat” but who voted Remain.

The point is that this part of the film, subtitled “The People”, does not deliberately seek out either the typical cases – white working class Leave voters, or cosmopolitan, young and especially Scottish Remain voters – nor the exceptions.

There were good arguments for leaving the EU, just as there were good arguments to remain. By paying attention and giving people the time to speak, Brexitannia, allows those arguments to emerge eloquently and expressively.

Several people highlight the EU’s lack of accountability: “If your national government cocks up, you can vote them out. If the EU cocks up, you’re stuck with it.” Farmers and fishermen complain of unfair regulation. Nevertheless, these arguments were and are swamped by other issues: saying “Fuck off” to “arrogant politicians”, British jobs for British workers, going back to the days of empire. As one woman says, “It wasn’t even a vote about in or out. It was about immigration.”

These issues still arouse strong emotions and prejudices. In the cinema, I noticed people laughing at some of the less educated people in the film, even as they said, “there are a lot of assumptions made about Leave voters”.

Brexitannia’s “Part II: the experts” locates these divisions in the wider geopolitical context, with views from intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Heidi Mirza. It is striking how abstract their discussion of neoliberalism and hegemonies seems after the personal testimonies of “the people”.

Nevertheless, the forces they identify – the platform increasingly given to right-wing nationalism or the influence of press magnate Rupert Murdoch – are stirring in their own way. Brexitannia is thus an informative film that is emotionally powerful by sheer virtue of the space it gives to opinions.

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If there is a tendency for people who have never worked on a fishing boat to idealise fishing, Golden Fish, African Fish leaves no doubt that it is backbreaking work. Though they may sing as they haul their nets (the film has a great soundtrack), fishermen spend long hours exposed to the elements. As one of the Kafountine fishermen says, “the sea enters your bones and your body, that’s why the fisherman gets cold quickly and loses his strength.”

It is not only the catching of the fish that is hard. Porters carry the crates of fish from the boats to shore, where others scale and take the fins off them. Most of the fish are then smoked in earth ovens, and the scales are ground into flour. All of this is done by hand, exhausting physically, while the workers at the ovens get so much smoke in their eyes that they often become partially blind. One reason they have to work in such conditions, Dr Aliou Sall, an expert on the anthropology of fisheries in Senegal and vice-president of Mundus Maris, explained, is that since the colonial era almost all investment in fisheries has been in industrial scale companies. Artisanal fishing has been neglected and people have to fend for themselves.

Paradoxically, it is precisely because of predominance of industrial fisheries elsewhere on the African Atlantic coast that Kafountine attracts migrant workers from across the region – up to 15,000 people, according to Mundus Maris. Huge trawlers that dredge up every living things are often foreign-owned and so leave nothing for the local people. Likewise, the factories that process the fish, turning it into animal or plant feed instead of human food, mean a decline in jobs. Kafountine has so far escaped this fate and so people have come from the Gambia, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and elsewhere to, as one young man says, “struggle and make a living” in a place where there are still jobs.

Kafountine’s model is far from perfect: for example, people are taking wood from the forest at an unsustainable rate to fuel smoking ovens, and furthermore the smoke is toxic. But it is a living community. As one of the workers says, “‘Factory’, here, means ‘death’.” Golden Fish, African Fish shows at once the commitment and the struggle of a life without mass industrialisation.

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Filmmaker Ananalisa Piras was granted unprecedented access to Mogherini’s schedule, following her over 2 years. “You can be human and strong at the same time”, Mogherini is quoted as saying at the start of the film, and as we see her at work in her office (an Obama election poster and her children’s drawings on the walls) and in meetings with world leaders like Russia’s Putin, Europe at Sea tries to make that seem true of its subject. Especially in dealing with migration: Mogherini is presented as being emotionally affected by the stories of the many thousands of migrants crossing or trying to cross from Libya. She speaks in the film “as a mother myself” to insist that “if a mother puts her children and herself on a boat in those conditions,” they must be fleeing something terrible.

Nevertheless, Europe’s use of foreign policy to try to stop migration can be criticised. Europe at Sea glosses over the fact that Europe’s priority is cutting migration altogether, not just protecting people from traffickers. It shows EU staff working in Niger to boost security on the premise that this will allow the country to develop economically and reduce migration, but ignores NGOs’ warnings that this means EU development policy is turning towards militarisation instead of helping the poorest. Only a passing reference is given to the controversy surrounding EU collaboration with the Libyan coastguard to stop migrants – a collaboration that the UN Human Rights Commissioner, among others, has condemned.

The picture that emerges from Europe at Sea is incomplete: EU foreign policy has accelerated massively but it doesn’t fully explain what that means. Perhaps this is deliberate: Annalisa Piras admits it was difficult to convey in an understandable way the extraordinarily complex “puzzle” of EU foreign policy, and she had to cut so much that there would be enough material for a second movie. Mogherini, who was present at the premiere at Bozar, said that dealing with problems bit by bit, “putting together the pieces of the puzzle, with no silver bullet” was “a very European way”. Europe at Sea invests a great deal in making its subject seem dramatic (Mogherini, whose father was a film director, herself praised its cinematography). Given the intense pace of change that is justified. But, with the far-right on the rise in Europe, not least in Mogherini’s native Italy, the biggest drama may be yet to come.

Europe at Sea is now available to watch online on ARTE

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But Tehran Taboo shows the other side of this: prostitutes and drug dealers do business with the very state agents who claim to uphold “morality laws”, fake hymens are on sale to restore the virginity of would-be brides, and corrupt officials offer anything from divorce papers to clandestine abortions in return for bribes or sexual favours. A debut from Iranian expat Ali Soozandeh, the film follows four young people trying to live their lives in a double-faced society, and is a touching story of friendship and the determination to enjoy life as much as it is a cutting indictment of a repressive regime.

Soozandeh’s anger at the hypocrisy of Iranian society is real, unsparingly railing at how something as small as a prank call can result in the threat of exile or execution. But the film’s bitterness does not prevent it taking an understanding and sympathetic approach to its characters. Everyone has a secret in Tehran Taboo, everyone has to lie to avoid being cracked down on by the “Morality Police”. The stories of the main characters become intertwined in ways that might seem unlikely in any other film, but here reflect how an ever-present restrictiveness brings people together and involves everyone in its deceit. The protagonists – a prostitute and her son, two liberal-minded young women, a student musician – find themselves helping each other out, moved by the common desire simply to live according to what they want from life and not what is decided for them.

The expression of that desire is also a resistance to the anonymity that the city threatens. Tehran is a city of over 8 million people, many of whom have come to find work and are instead confronted with violence and a loss of hope. In the animation, we see beggars in the background of almost every scene, and are taken into the alleys where prostitutes and poor watchmen try to make their living. Equally distressing is the sense of entrapment that characterizes even the apparently luxurious apartment block where some of the characters live. Those characters look out over the sprawling city and see birds swirling through the sky – a symbol that in the end becomes double-sided, like everything else in Tehran, expressing tragedy as well as hope.

Tehran Taboo is a daring film, daring in the sympathy it offers its characters as well as its head-on confrontation with a dangerous state. Using rotoscope animation, it presents provocative scenes that would otherwise be impossible to film while maintaining a level of human likeness. It worthy of the Anima festival, proving how animation can tackle difficult themes without simplifying them and with great humanity.

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Silas charts an investigation that eventually revealed how multinational corporations were taking over more than 50% of Liberia’s forests – around 25% of the country as a whole. It is a story of companies forging tribespeople’s signatures and hiring thugs to drive them off their land, of authorities embezzling millions of dollars from funds meant for Ebola recovery efforts, and of a cover-up that is gradually traced back to the heart of the government and the president herself.

Combining filming from the field with United Nations footage, and shot over the course of seven years from 2010, Silas both documents what was happening on the ground in Liberia and is still happening, and examines the country’s history as a democracy. It is also an intimate of its portrait of its hero, taking us into his home to explore the motivations of a man who was awarded the 2006 Goldman Prize (the “environmental Nobel Prize”) and the personal costs of his commitment to often dangerous work, fighting vested interests.

It shows, touchingly, Siakor’s relationship with the communities with whom he works to defend their rights, and the photography in these scenes, particularly, is beautiful. It may one day be a record of a way of life that cared for the forests instead of exploiting them.

Illegal logging and land-grabbing is not just an issue for Liberia, and Silas is currently on a European tour with NGOs campaigning for more EU action to support human rights and environmental defenders.

At the Brussels premiere, Saskia Ozinga from the association Fern said the EU had already acted to stop illegal timber being imported to Europe, but that more needed to be done to counter the damaging spread of oil palm and soy plantations. Siakor said his “Brussels message” was: “support civil society. It is the people on the frontline who record companies’ and governments’ crimes and make fighting corruption possible, and it is they who are most at risk, » he said.

Asked whether he found it “depressing” that corruption was still prevalent in Liberia, Siakor insisted that there “are hopeful moments, and I want to dwell on those.” He added that he had agreed to cooperate in making the film on one condition: that it showed his and his people’s struggles as they really were, with no “movie tricks”. In the end, Silas is just that – an important film of a community fighting and hoping for a better future for themselves and their country.

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The film’s opening sequence takes us to the summer of 2015, and by following just one boatload of Syrian refugees arriving in Greece, it illustrates the vulnerability of people who have lost all they own. A small, flimsy boat in a vast sea – and then, suddenly, the aerial view switches to the shaky footage of a cameraphone as a rescue team rushes to get the people onto the shore. Ai Weiwei uses this technique, again and again, combining long-shot, eerily beautiful photography with the suddenness of impromptu filming. It is a technique that explores the relationship people have with their surroundings when they are deprived of the most basic human needs like shelter, and makes the film thoughtful, intimate and urgent at once.

The jumps in scene – from Bangladesh to Mexico, sea to desert – replicate a sense of dislocation that only strengthens the film’s direct, human message. Ai Weiwei himself says that “this is not a refugee crisis, it is a human crisis.” He began filming when he was on holiday with his wife in Greece at the height of refugee arrivals there; the film springs from the need to tell what he witnessed then and since. It is not just horror: there are moments of humour and friendship, as Ai shares selfies with the people he meets or laughingly swaps passports with a young Syrian man, a joke the warm human feeling of which is not tainted by the irony it evokes.

That human message is directed at the world, and it ought to be one that resounds particularly in Europe. One fact Human Flow does not mention is that 84% of the world’s refugees are hosted by developing countries. Nevertheless, it is inevitable that much of the focus is on Europe, the continent where, as the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi says, the Refugee Convention was born. One of the shocking facts behind the film is that in 1989, 11 countries in the world had border fences or walls. By 2016, 70 countries did. This is graphically illustrated in the case of the refugees leaving Greece who found their way suddenly and cruelly blocked by barbed wire and army patrols firing stun grenades and tear gas at them. Several European countries had shut their borders, and that still haven’t opened them.

At 140 minutes, Human Flow is long, but it maintains suspense to the end.  It does not have an actual storyline – because the story of the people it films is not over. We are left wondering, with empathy, What will happen to them? Where next?

Human Flow official trailer

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“Then we began to realize that things were a little bit more complicated,” adds Emna. “That there are Islamists whom you must respect because they too have the right to dream of their country.”

Under a crisp blue sky, dozens of red flags decorate the city of Tunis, hung from thin, almost transparent wires. Two women walk side by side, one with a headscarf, the other one without. There is calm in the streets; the tumultuous days of the 2011 Revolution are behind them. Now it’s time to redefine the country.

Then we are introduced to Jawhara Ettis, an Islamist professor who declares herself a progressive and a feminist, a woman who wants to keep the traditions of Islam in post-revolutionary Tunisia. Seated behind the desk where she teaches, she addresses the camera, “You cannot be a subordinate to France or the United States and forget about your religion, your history and your language just in order to be declared a progressive.”

How does a country find the path to democracy after years of dictatorship? Can a new constitution create the space for every religious belief and political stance to coexist in harmony? 

Throughout the film we see both women, each in her own way, fighting for the kind of democracy they would like to see in their country. We see Jawhara’s run to become a member of the Constituency Assembly representing the Ennahda party and her efforts to create the laws that will preserve the traditions she believes in, and she also advocates for the rights of women. But there are challenges. We see her struggle to understand some of the paradoxes within Islam, namely the branch of Salafi jihadism.

“That is not Islam,” she says, after the terrorist attacks at the Bardo Museum in 2015. It is a moment of high tension in the film, and the camera frames her face, a bright blue scarf covering her hair. But she just looks down, unable to say anything more.

We see Emna campaigning against the wave of violence carried out by the police. In front of the camera, on the radio and on social media, she denounces injustice. “There is no possibility of having democracy if you cannot feel safe in the streets.”

Both of them get married and half-way through the film give birth to two beautiful girls. Both have to make choices on how to prioritize their personal, working and political lives, knowing there will be consequences, no matter what they choose. Emna’s husband, a man who has come back from the US, carries their baby in his arms and thinks out loud about the future. Will she be grateful that her parents decided to raise her in post-revolutionary Tunisia? Or will she have wished they had moved to the US?

The film was shown at the One World Film Festival in Brussels, organized by People in Need and The Czech Center for Human Rights and Democratisation.
https://www.oneworld.cz/2017/

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