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Le Blog sur les femmes africaines dans le cinéma est un espace pour l'échange d'informations concernant les réalisatrices, comédiennes, productrices, critiques et toutes professionnelles dans ce domaine. Ceci sert de forum public du Centre pour l'étude et la recherche des femmes africaines dans le cinémas.

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30 June 2010

Najwa Tlili: Reflections on her film: Rupture

From a conversation with Najwa Tlili (Tunisia) in 1997 at Vues d'Afrique, Montreal, Canada, while still in production of the film Rupture.


Rupture is a film that addresses the problem of conjugal violence lived by Arab women in Canada. While doing this film about conjugal violence, I discovered that the complexities of this inquiry are tied to the circumstances of immigration, and the host country and its culture...

I focus on women living in Montreal, and who at the same time are connected to Canadian culture. And yet, there is a fundamental element that I want to touch. Beyond this complexity of violence, I find myself making a film about the Arab woman, her condition, which is not different from that of the Arab woman living in Tunisia or any other Arab country...

It is very difficult to situate myself in relation to this film, to say what identity I should give it. I would say that it is the identity of the moment. I find myself invested in this film, inhabited by it, and finally it is allowing me to have a certain reconciliation with myself...

When I talk about the condition of the Arab woman in my film, I realize that there is a reality that surfaces in which the Arab women who live here are trying to overcome their situations individually. They do not do so within a community. There is no movement to propel this process; there is no revolution. In the Arab world, it is the same thing; women cope with their problems alone, it is the same case in Africa...

From Sisters of the Screen: Women of African on Film, Video and Television. Beti Ellerson. (Africa World Press, 2000).



Rupture (1998) by Najwa Tlili
from the Office National du Film Du Canada/National Film Board of Canada

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