There are silences that speak volumes. The one who now settles behind the closed doors of Ciné Jamil El Menzah 6 has the melancholy sweetness of the end of a period. This cinema, which was much more than a dark room, has just definitively bowed out – and with it, a piece of the film-loving heart of Tunis is passing away.
In this room, how many friendships were born, how many dreams took shape in the trembling shadow of the projected images? Ciné Jamil was not just a place for broadcasting: it was a refuge for lovers of the big screen, a space of freedom where Tunisian films rubbed shoulders with works from around the world, where the voices of the public often prolonged the session, around a coffee, in passionate discussions.
Today, the projector stops, the dust settles on the chairs, and the echoes of the applause fade away like a fragile memory. We don’t know what precipitated the closure – the weight of the years, the cinema crisis, or simply the wear and tear of a dream. Never mind. What remains is the luminous trace of this place in the collective memory: that of a cinema which, for decades, made the heart of El Menzah 6 beat.
Tonight, moviegoers won’t be going to Jamil. But somewhere, in the darkness of their memories, the film continues to roll.
