Aïcha, directed by Mehdi Barsaoui, is a gripping, thrilling study of the evolution of a young woman as she tries to find a new life and new identity after being assumed dead, amid endemic corruption in Tunisia.
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by Alexa DalbyAïcha
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
Aya (Fatma Sfar)), in her late twenties, feels trapped in her life with her parents in southern Tunisia, seeing no prospects for change.
One day, the minivan she commutes in daily between her town and the hotel where she works as a chambermaid crashes, leaving her as the sole survivor, although she is thought dead like the other passengers.
Thinking this could be her chance for a fresh start and new life, she flees to Tunis under a new identity, but her new life as Amina is soon jeopardised when she becomes the main witness to a death and subsequent police and ministry cover-up, which becomes a national and social media scandal. If she agrees to testify and expose the corruption, she will lose her new anonymous identity and the police Deputy Director (Nidhal Saadi) will have to give her yet another new identity.
Aya escapes from the crash that kills her colleagues but everyone assumes she died too. She makes her way to Tunis disguised in a burqa: there she reinvents herself as ‘Amina’ and quickly finds a room in a flat with another woman Lobna (Yasmine Dimassi): she thinks she has achieved her big-city ambitions and found freedom at last. She is befriended by a working-class neighbour Hela (Hela Ayed).
But she is led by her flatmate into situations in nightclubs (drink, drugs and men) that she has no experience of and as a result, when she witnesses an incident, she becomes more aware of the crippling misogyny of the society she lives in. She comes to realise and express openly her resentment of the restrictions her parents imposed, the work they forced her to do and the life opportunities she lost because of their decisions.
Inspired by a real-life story about a woman presumed dead, Aïcha is directed by Tunisian filmmaker Mehdi Barsaoui like a thriller that spirals Aya further and further down into seeing endemic misogyny, corruption and cover-up as she is forced to lie. And who hasn’t wanted to disappear and start again with a clean slate as she almost did? It’s harder than you think in Tunisia. Aïcha is a gripping story about the evolution of a woman and it has a very serious centre about the state of Tunisian society.
Aïcha premieres at the Venice Film Festival on 4 September 2024. It won the Best Mediterranean Film Award from the Academy of Fine Arts. International representation is by Alibi.
