The veil rises on “promised the sky”: the trailer for the new feature film by Erige Sehiri has just been revealed, offering a first glimpse of this highly anticipated film, which will have the honor of opening the a certain view of the Cannes Festival 2025.
This revelation is a highlight for Tunisian cinema. To my knowledge, “promised the sky” will be the first Tunisian film to inaugurate this prestigious parallel section, dedicated to singular eyes and daring works.
From the first images, the film imposes a sober, human tone, crossed by a dull tension. We discover three sub -Saharan women who refugee in a Tunisian house: Marie, an Ivorian pastor and former journalist installed in the country for ten years, Naney, a young mother fleeing precariousness, and pretty, a determined student to emancipate. The arrival of an orphan little girl shakes up this fragile balance, revealing impulses of solidarity but also the intimate cracks of each.
Through these two minutes of images, we already recognize Erige Sehiri’s cinema: an art of attention, unsaid, presence. The Franco-Tunisian director, whose Under the figs had been presented at the Directors’ Fortnight in 2022And submitted by Tunisia to the Oscar for the best international filmcontinues here a work anchored in reality, attentive to the faces and invisible tensions.
The scenario, co -written with Anna Ciennik and Malika Louati, draws from contemporary Tunisian reality, marked by the growing stigma of migrants from sub -Saharan Africa.
In an interview with the magazine VarietyErige Sehiri returns to the progressive impregnation of the political situation in fiction: ” At the start, I did not intend to document what was going on in Tunisia, but little by little, the film began to reflect the political situation of the country. The reality has caught up the story we were writing. »»
And to add: ” As a Tunisian woman, I am deeply frustrated to note that we are not able to welcome migrants with dignity, even though we come from a country whose diaspora is so vast. We act as if we did not all live on the same continent, as if we were not all Africans. »»
Anxious to avoid any simplification, the filmmaker insists on the complexity of her characters: ” Faced with massive arrests and police descents throughout the territory, we wondered: how to bring these tensions into our story without locking up our characters in dated and reducing stereotypes? We were trying to keep a critical distance from events, to avoid free violence on the screen. What we wanted was to see women who live, who resist, who hope. »»
On the image side, the trailer also reveals the work of the operating chief Frida Marzouk, whose visual sensitivity had already marked Adèle’s life of Abdellatif Kechiche, Palme d’Or 2013, and more recently Bye bye Tiberias by Lina Soualem. His camera marries the faces and spaces here with a precise sweetness.
The film brings together Aïssa Maïga, Debora Lobe Naney, Laetitia Ky, Estelle Kenza Dogbo, Foued Zaazaa, Mohamed Graya and Touré Blamassi. It is produced by Didar Domehri and Erige Sehiri for Maneki Films and Henia Production, in co -production with Canal+, with the participation of TV5 Monde, and in association with Mad Solutions and Pathé Touch Africa. International sales are provided by Luxbox, French distribution by Jour2Fête.
By choosing to open A certain look With a Tunisian film, the Cannes Film Festival highlights a word from the South, lucid and deeply human. And thanks to this first sequence now available, the public is invited to penetrate a fragile universe, tense, but crossed by solidarity.
Neïla Driss
