Abou Leila (2019)

For a long time, this tense thriller doesn't let you in on what is going on - all you know is that two men are travelling by car across the Algerian desert in 1994 looking for someone or something called Abou Leila, and you know their plan is foolhardy, misguided, or even delusional, and it is interrupted regularly, repetitively, by one man's violent dreams - and in the end, the movie didn't make much sense to me: in the context of Algeria's civil war, something is said about cyclical violence. 

★★★☆☆

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The String (Le Fil) (2009)

Won't it be nice one day to not have to watch and rewatch this story over and over again about homosexual lovers keeping their love a secret, sometimes in the Pyrenees, sometimes in Wyoming, but here, in Tunisia, where class — not just homosexuality — plays a role in rich and privileged architect Malik wanting to keep his love of poor shoeless home-help Bilal a secret from mommy — a minor, well-meaning story set in an interesting cultural context but an oh-so-familiar one with lurching tonal shifts, sometimes opting for screwball sex comedy, sometimes becoming an absurdist farce with its peculiar "string" analogy thrown in only occasionally, and in its worst moments, it is a condescending social commentary. 

★★☆☆☆

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Look At Me (Regarde-moi) (2018)

If you find it hard to watch the yelling and screaming, you have to spare a thought for actual parents of profoundly autistic children who live a life like that of Tunisian immigrant Lotfi and live it truly, without Lotfi's unlikely nightclub nights-out and long phone calls and shopping trips that so often in this drama leave you wondering where Lotfi's severly autistic son Youssef ends up, but get past the unlikelihood of such scenes and this is a beautifully acted, touching drama, showing a guilt-ridden absent father finally stepping up and taking responsibility and starting to make (the right? the wrong?) parenting decisions.

★★★★☆

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