Nacer Khemir

A young teacher arrives to take over a village school isolated in the shimmering desert. Legendary figures materialize out of wells and the desert itself, groups of children hurry through a labyrinth of underground corridors, and the teacher is whisked away to a mysterious rendezvous and never returns.

The collected work known as "One Thousand and One Nights" survived for centuries through generations of Arab storytellers, and is now recognized as an integral part of world literature. In this filmed performance, storyteller/filmmaker Nacer Khemir sits on chair in the middle of a dimly lit stage and deploys the magic of words to take us on a journey of the imagination. This simple set-up may not seem like much, but it offers the listener an extraordinarily colorful experience and brilliantly emphasizes the oral nature of the work. As we listen to the expertly told stories, we are equally charmed by their intricacies and entranced by their interconnectedness. Even though Khemir illustrates some of the stories with beautifully filmed sequences, the audience's ability to listen is paramount here. Sheherazade used words to avoid impending death, Khemir uses the art of storytelling to breathe a new life into this ancient masterwork.

There are around twenty thousand cafés in Tunisia, but barely ten movie theaters. In the past, we Arabs missed out on the printing revolution. I wonder if today we are missing out on the image revolution. This political fiction attempts to respond, even through utopia, to the hope inspired by this new Tunisia in the making.

An old woman is sitting with motionless and two eyes closed. Suddenly, a visitor shows up in the courtyard of the house while she is looking at the sunlight through a window. The turtle and a door open onto her memories and it makes her think of a memory about a rosary. The images of an unforgettable past remain in her mind with longing about her missing son.

A man (played by the filmmaker Nacer Khemir) returns home to Tunis to bury his mother. After the burial, his father gives him an "amana" to be handed to a certain Sheikh named Muhyiddin. Taken by his father's request, the man immediately sets out on an epic journey to find the long lost Sheikh and deliver the "amana."