“Tunisia Year Zero” is a film about the free­dom of speech that people recov­ered after the rev­o­lu­tion. It pro­pos­es to show the mood of a time sus­pend­ed between past and future: a spring in which denun­ci­a­tions of the cor­rup­tion and abuses of the pre­vi­ous regime go along with fears and hopes about the future of the coun­try. It is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned with an area of the north­ern sub­urbs of Tunis, La Goulette, which has suf­fered from a major spec­u­la­tion in recent years, both mate­ri­al­ly and cul­tur­al­ly. The film focus­es on the speci­fici­ties of the social fabric (mostly com­posed by poor people) and on a vari­ety of occu­pa­tions (fish­er­men, shop­keep­ers, restau­ra­teurs) that remain until today threat­ened to leave their living spaces.

With a style that is both dra­mat­ic and humor­ous, the film presents sev­er­al tes­ti­monies of people that expose the absur­di­ties of the system that has dom­i­nat­ed Tunisia for sev­er­al decades. Thus, it aims at par­tic­i­pat­ing in on-going public debate on polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al issues in post-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Tunisia.

Olfa Chakroun: see LA MAISON D’ANGELA.