Arab Blues
Screening: Wednesday, February 12
Time: 1h28m
Genre: French/Tunisian comedy (subtitled)
Rating: PG13
Writer/director Manele Labidi’s clever comedy illustrates how Tunisians are suffering from Arab Blues, an epidemic of confusion after prolonged exposure to the country’s cultural clash, between its traditional values and modernity, following the 2011 revolution. Will clarity dispel confusion? How can the people recover and find a way forward?
Selma Dervish (Golshiftah Farahani) also wonders whether she can find a way forward, after she leaves Paris to set up the first and much-needed psychoanalytic practice in her birthplace,Tunis. Reunited with her dysfunctional extended family, stymied by a complicated bureaucracy and discouraged by reluctant prospective clients, will Selma be able to stop the spread of the Arab Blues or will she become infected herself? Don’t miss this entertaining film, itself a lighthearted cinematic cure for the Arab Blues.