Tunisia film 'Under the Fig Trees' unfurls modern rural youth
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- 10 Feb 2023
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The Tunisian director of "Under the Fig Trees," which portrays young harvest workers, said she hoped the award-winning drama would "smash the cliche" that rural women are "miserable and closed."
Erige Sehiri told Agence France-Presse (AFP) her first feature-length work relates the secrets, love stories and resentments of the mostly female orchard workers who live in the countryside but are "modern and connected."
The young women pick fruit in rural Tunisia but are hyper-connected and use social media to eke out their freedom, in contrast to their older colleagues who live in a more conservative world.
"Our young people are so modern, just like everywhere else in the world," said Sehiri, 40.
The fig orchard, near the town of Kesra, "represents a space of liberty for workers, especially the young ones, where they can talk and discuss everything freely," she said.
Shot in the blistering summer heat of Tunisia's marginalized north, the characters are played by actors from similar backgrounds – all amateurs who normally have harvest jobs or work at wholesale markets.
"It's a film inspired by real events, things I've heard from women farm workers who work hard all year, and high school students who come in the summer," the director said.
The young women, sometimes helped by a young man, pick soft ripe figs which are then packaged by older workers, under the orders of a bossy young man representing the traditional patriarchal structure. The symbolism extends to the trees themselves, representing the hardships of life.
The film, a co-production involving France, Tunisia, Qatar, Switzerland and Germany, will hit screens in France on Wednesday and premiere later in Britain, Italy and Belgium. Read More…
