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Back home after having lived in Paris since she was a child, psychoanalyst Selma opens a counseling practice in Tunis only to find her clients are as challenging to her as she is to them.
In this moving comedy of cultures in flux, Arab Blues (Un divan a Tunis) sees Selma, a psychoanalyst, leave the comforts of Paris to return to her childhood home in Tunisia. Determined to bring her craft to a land where shrinks are rare (and desperately needed), Selma finds the going rough—her teenaged niece thinks that Selma’s lost her mind leaving Europe, and a lot of her friends, family, and townsfolk don’t have a clue what exactly she does for a living. Not to mention the local authorities, who cast a suspicious eye on this very Western tradition of psychiatry. With its cast of rich characters, Manele Labidi’s wonderful comedy is at once moving and hilarious.
Director Biography
Born in 1982, Manele Labidi is a largely self-taught French-Tunisian writer and director. Her first short film, “A Room of My Own” (“Une chambre à moi”) (2018) is a personal examination of Virginia Woolf’s famous essay. Arab Blues (2019) is her first feature film.
Press
"[F]irst-time writer-director Manele Labidi packs a lot of affectionate observations into compact running time." - Screen Daily
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