Tunisian auteur Mohamed Ben Attia‘s new work “Behind the Mountains,” which will soon launch from the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section, sees the director add a supernatural element to the social dramas for which he is known.
Attia’s third feature reunites the director with Majd Mastoura, star of his breakout drama “Hedi” — about a repressed young man ignited by a free-spirited woman — which won best debut and actor honors at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival.
In “Mountains,” Mastoura plays a man named Rafeek who, after spending four years in jail, takes his only son to the Atlas Alps in the Northwest of Tunisia to prove to him that he can fly.
“The idea goes back to my high school years” said Ben Attia of the film. “It was just a picture I had in my mind; the picture of a man who is running until, little by little, he manages to fly away.” The director then put this idea aside, but it resurfaced while he was shooting his second movie “Dear Son” (“Weldi”) — which is about a Tunisian middle class couple with high hopes for the future of their only son, who discover he’s left to join ISIS in Syria — and launched from the Cannes Director’s Fortnight in 2018.
“This man’s superpower then appeared to me as something that could be linked to his intense anguish, his anger, his violence. I thought about what his life could have been like and I wrote this script,” Ben Attia added.
Just like Ben Attia’s previous works, “Behind the Mountains” is produced byTunisia’s Dora Bouchoucha and Lina Chaabane via their Nomadis Images shingle. It is a co-production with Belgium’s Dardenne brothers in collaboration with France’s Nadim Cheikhrouha of Tanit Films and Italy’s Giovanni Robbiano, Lorenzo Rapetti and Giovani Giusto of 010 Films and Paolo Maria Spina.
France’s Luxbox is handling international sales.Watch the trailer above.
