Cinema
One Evening in July
Un soir de juillet
Raja Amari · 2000
Synopsis
Saïda, a middle-aged widow, is hired to prepare brides on their wedding day: the henna, the massage, the make-up. Myriam, a young bride-to-be, refuses her care; her marriage was not arranged, but she is afraid, does not feel ready and speaks of the disgust the man she is about to marry inspires in her. Her distress takes Saïda back to memories of her own youth and of her marriage to a man twice her age; between the two women a silent complicity forms.
Context
A twenty-six-minute short film in colour, written and directed by Amari, the film brings together Hend Sabri, Baya Zarouk, Wassila Baccar and Alya Azzouz; Aurélien Devaux photographed it and Nadia Ben Rachid edited it. It is the filmmaker's third short film, after those of 1995 and 1998, shot two years after she left the Fémis. Olivier Barlet, for Africultures, notes in it a style made of gestures, silences and body language, and a subversive power of transgression. It was shown again at the Three Continents Festival in Nantes in 2005, in a panorama of Tunisian cinema, and in New York in a programme of short films by African women directors.
Who it is for
A short film about marriage rites, accessible without prior knowledge of the country's wedding traditions.
Prizes and reception
First prize at the Milan festival and Golden Dhow at the Zanzibar International Film Festival.
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