Tunisia – On Sunday morning, Tunisian film director and former Minister of Culture, Moufida Talatli, died at the age of 74. The Tunisian Ministry of Culture mourned the late director and offered its condolences to the intellectuals and filmmakers in Tunisia and to her family.
Moufida Talatli was born in the city of Sidi Bou Said in the northern suburbs of the capital in 1947, and obtained a diploma in montage from the Institute of Graduate Film Studies in Paris in 1968. To work in French television as a text editor and production director, before returning to Tunisia in 1972 and involved in the world of the seventh art that she loved Since she was young.
In 1994 she directed her first film, “The Silence of the Palaces,” which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and won many international awards. It was crowned in the same year by the Carthage Film Festival, thus becoming the first female director in the Arab world and Africa to be crowned the Golden Tanit of Carthage Film Festival.
The film, which Al-Talatli directed on a joint scenario between her and Al-Nouri Bouzid, was chosen in 2013 as the fifth best film on a reference list of the 100 Best Arab Films, and it stars Hind Sabry, Amal Al-Hadhili, Najia Al-Ourgi, Hisham Rustom, Kamal Al-Fazaa, Sami Bouajila, Sabah Bouzouita, and others.
The long novelist tells the story of the young woman, Alya, a pregnant singer, whose lover asks her to have an abortion. Meanwhile, the girl learns about the death of her former master, Prince Ali, the owner of the grand palace in which she grew up, so she returns to console his family.
Returning to the palace, she was surprised by the memories, so she regained the pain of her mother, who was one of the maids in it, and more than that, she was the cook, the dancer, and the lover … and with a cinematic poetry, memories accelerate in a higher mind, so she remembers her childhood and her confusion, who was born from an unknown father in that palace full of secrets.
Sabah Bouzouita: The late woman was an example of a woman carrying an integrated intellectual and aesthetic project
Her films also include “The Men`s Season”, which she produced in the year 2000, and whose story revolves around the women of the island of Djerba, (southeastern Tunisia) and the migration of their men and dispersing them away from them to work, especially in trade and traditional handicrafts. Al-Talatli tells the size of the emotional and psychological void that the island’s dreamy women live in. In the absence of their husbands. He is starring Hind Sabry in the second interaction between her and Al-Talatli along with Mona Noureddine, Sabah Bouzouita, Ahmed Al-Hafian, Ali Al-Khumairi, Hayam Al-Risaa, Wujiha Al-Jendoubi, and others.
Al-Talatli, who also directed her third film “Nadia and Sarah” in 2004, edited many Arab films that had great public success such as “A fertile memory” by Palestinian Michel Khleifi and “Halfaween” by Tunisian Farid Bougdir and “Aziza” by his compatriot Abdel Latif Bin Ammar and “Nahla”. By the Algerian Farouk Belouha and “A door above the sky” by Moroccan Farida Belizid.
Al-Talatli was chosen as Minister of Culture in the national unity government that was formed after the overthrow of the regime of former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.
A number of movie stars in Tunisia mourned, including Dora Zarrouk, who collaborated with the late in the movie “Nadia and Sarah”, where she wrote on Twitter, “I still cannot believe the departure of the creative Tunisian director Moufida Talatli. In the last two years we are losing the generation that made us love cinema and art. in the Arab world. My trip early, Moufida. ”
Hind Sabri called her, saying, “The woman who changed my life left today .. The woman who discovered me and saw what no one else saw, left today and turned a page that I was not ready to fold. ‘Mova’ .. the woman, mother .. Thanks for everything. Thank you, teacher. For your good soul, peace. ”
Tunisian actress Wajiha Jendoubi, who collaborated with Tlatli in her second film, “Season of Men,” wrote on her Facebook page, “The owner of ‘The Silence of the Palaces’ and ‘The Season of Men’ … Tunisian director Moufida Talatli has gone to a better world for sure .. We belong to God and to Him. Come back ”.
Ahmed Al-Hafyan: Moufida Talatli is one of the directors who love the Tunisian actor
In a statement to “Al Arab” Tunisian actor Ahmed El Hafian, who also participated in the movie “Season of the Men,” said, “Moufida Talatli is one of the directors who care deeply in love and love for the Tunisian actor, and she has kindness and clarity in communicating what she wants during filming, so she makes you feel that you are the owner of the project. “Working with her was fun. Goodbye, my honorable lady, you will remember our memories of what she did to Tunisian and Arab cinema.”
In turn, actress Sabah Bouzouita said to “Al-Arab”, “Moufida Al-Talatli was for me an example of a woman carrying an integrated intellectual and aesthetic project. She triumphed for women and the possibility of achieving them in her cinematic trilogy, and I am proud of my participation with her in this pioneering community project through my films“ The Silence of the Palaces ”and“ Season Men’”.
Fathi al-Kharrat, the former director general of the Cinema Department, said, “The late woman had many human qualities, including purity, humility, goodness, and human warmth, as well as professionalism, which made her present in many prestigious festivals as a member of the jury.”
“With the departure of Moufida Tlatli, Tunisian cinema loses one of its pioneers, who has mercy as much as she gave Tunisian cinema in abundance and generosity.”
In Egypt, the Aswan Festival for Women’s Films announced in a statement, “Dedicating its fifth session, scheduled for this year, to the late director who undertook the task of expressing the suffering of women and succeeded in presenting her problems on the silver screen with great craftsmanship in her films.”
The administration of the Aswan Festival confirmed that with the departure of Talatli, Tunisian and Arab cinema lost one of its most important symbols, which took upon itself the task of expressing the suffering of women, and succeeded in presenting their problems on the silver screen very professionally.
