After the family album, Railway Men, Erige Sehiri signs Under the Fig Trees selected at the Directors’ Fortnight at the 2022 Cannes Festival. The film was released in Tunisian theaters on November 6 after a preview of the JCC in the official selection of feature films of fiction and was awarded the Silver Tanit. Sana, Fidel, Meriem, Malek, Firas, Abdou, Gaith, and others go in the early morning to harvest the figs in Makthar.
Once arrived under the fig trees, life takes on a completely other meaning. Under a bright sun and documentary film aesthetics, Erige Sehiri takes her time to convey her characters one by one.
She lingers on their perched heads, they are looking for grown figs, may likewise be the right time to consider or look for the words it takes. During the picking, the young people debate among themselves, love stories take shape, and others seem to end.
All the beauty of the film is specifically in this definition given to love. this working day, under a sparkling light where the director squarely caresses their faces with her camera giving us a tender portrait of this youth, the young people launch sole but not that, they settle their account.
The film is not monumental but its transcendence lies in its sincerity, simplicity, and “generosity” as described by French critic Charles Tesson. On the technical level “under the figs “might seem minimalist nevertheless its weight lies in the narration of portraits.
Erige Sehiri has finely anticipated that all these figs were picked to bring in their dreams, disappointments, clear ideas, forbidden loves but also ache and suffering. This film is a sort of living diary telling a Tunisian youth surely forgotten, sometimes euphoric, sometimes desperate, but who believes hard that tomorrow will be better.
Under the figs, Erige Sehiri brings something else to Tunisian cinema: a new approach and cinematographic aesthetic. This film is a moment of respite, serenity but above all sincerity. Let’s not forget that producing a cinema is to lie as sincerely as possible.
By:Henda Haouala
Jury Fipresci/ JCC 2022
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