From 2013, Tunisia saw many of its citizens leave to join the ranks of Daesh (Arabic acronym for the Islamic State organization) in Syria and Iraq, becoming one of the countries in the world most affected by these departures. . A trauma so deep that the question of their return remains a sensitive, even taboo, subject. A taboo that Meryem Joobeur wants to break in her first feature film, which is released in France on Wednesday 1is January. La Source “tells a story where the symbolism and beauty of the landscapes, combined with the accuracy of the acting, give a singularity to what could be perceived as yet another film on radicalism”, summarizes the Tunisian site Nawaat.
If many Tunisian filmmakers and artists have explored the question in recent years, the Canadian-Tunisian director delivers a unique perspective in this contemplative and dreamlike film that Tunisian journalists were able to discover during its screening during the Carthage Cinematographic Days , in mid-December. It is through the eyes of Aïcha that we enter the story of this family of shepherds living in a remote region in the north of the country, and devastated by the departure to Syria of two of their sons, Amine and Mehdi . The latter will be the only one to return, causing tensions between the mother and her husband, Brahim; disagreeing about their responsibilities and the need to hide this return or not; as well as questions from their younger brother, Adam.
The dilemmas of a pietà
“Aïcha, while welcoming her son, remains torn by the violence he embodies. The film questions the limits of maternal acceptance: how far can a mother go to love and protect her child? explain Nawaat. For the Tunisian newspaper The Press, she is a figure of “pietà who faces the drama and [de] matrix which contains the ills of the family, its own distressing premonitions, the horrifying silence which accompanies the return of the son and the pain of the foretold loss”.
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