DOUBLE DVD - SPOTLIGHT ON TUNISIA - In FOREIGN BODY, a young Tunisian woman arrives illegally in France following her escape from Tunisia’s mounting Islamist fundamentalism.  In Tunisia, the history of STAMBALI goes back to the arrival of the first Africans taken as slaves from Mali, Timbuktu specifically... 

FOREIGN BODY
DIRECTED BY RAJA AMARI
TUNISIA AND FRANCE / 2016 / ARABIC AND FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES / 92 MIN

In FOREIGN BODY, a young Tunisian woman arrives illegally in France following her escape from Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution. As she struggles to adapt to her new reality, she faces both danger and hope. This is the fourth feature film by academy member writer-director Raja Amari (Red Satin, Buried Secrets, Tunisian Spring).

"Politics and sensuality make for intriguing bedfellows in "Foreign Body," Raja Amari's accomplished survival tale about an undocumented young Tunisian woman finding her identity in France." ~ Los Angeles Times

STAMBALI
DIRECTED BY NAWFEL SAHEB-ETTABA
TUNISIA / 1999 / ENGLISH AND ARABIC WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES / 52 MIN

In Tunisia, the history of stambali goes back to the arrival of the first Africans taken as slaves from Mali, Timbuktu specifically. Practicing their music and worship in the house of their masters, the enslaved and their musical traditions survive to this day.

Stambali is a religious ritual in Tunisia, a journey with the rhythm of the "gombri" and "chkackek," traces an individual and collective hypnosis, an annual tribute that the disciples of Sidi Saad pay to their master during an initiatory journey and rite of purification that lasts three days.

In "Stambali," the camera, video and film follow the rhythm of the possession, dances, and goes into a trance, in the cemetery, in an open space of grass, trees, dust and sand, in the eroticism that is released by this physical and spiritual representation.