Afef Ben Mahmoud, who marked her inaugural year at the helm of the festival this year, tells Deadline that Sirāt was the first film that came into her mind when she was first proposed the role of festival director.

 “There’s something in the landscape of Sirāt which echoes with that of Gabès, even if it was shot in Morocco,” she says.

Situated on an Mediterranean oasis a four-hour drive south of the Tunisian capital of Tunis, Gabès is a place of contrasts, mixing natural beauty with heavy industry.

 “It’s a very particular. It’s the south. There’s the sea, the oasis, and at the same time, the industrial side,” says Mahmoud, noting the area has hosted several films shoots thanks to the landscape and light.

 “It’s also an extremely engaged city by comparison with the rest of Tunisia… and this has fed into the festival which is known throughout the Arab world for its activism,” she continues. “We’re really in the realm of cutting-edge, politically engaged cinema, cinema that’s proactive, that wants to change, that wants to raise awareness.”

Geopolitical tensions

 This year’s festival came together against the backdrop of geopolitical tensions across the Middle East and North Africa sparked by the Iran-U.S.-Israel War as well as the ongoing Israel-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon and Gaza humanitarian crisis.

 Gabès lies some 5,000 kilometers from the Gulf and is not at threat of military attack, but the ripple effects of the Iran conflict are being felt across the region. Aside from general unease over where the military action will lead, economies across the region are being impacted by the disruption of fuel supplies, trade and travel.

Ben Mahmoud also experienced the early days of the Iran-U.S. War firsthand as a long-time resident of Qatar, where partner Khalil Benkirane is Head of Grants at the Doha Film Institute.

With travel in and out of the Gulf state restricted as Iran lashed out at its Gulf neighbors, Ben Mahmoud found herself preparing the festival remotely in March to the boom of missile and drone interceptions, with her children at home as they continued their schooling online.

“I’ve always regarded art as an act of resistance. All the time that it was doable, we were going to do it because even if we can’t change the world, if we can touch it and raise awareness, that’s already an achievement,” she explains.

Ben Mahmoud says it was the festival’s commitment to politically engaged programming as well as its embrace of the moving image across cinema, virtual reality and video art that drew her to the event.

She has continued the tradition of political engagement with a program tackling complex realities and urgent issues across the MENA region, and beyond.

The festival kicked off on April 26 with a cine-concert by Lebanese composer and pianist Cynthia Zaven and sound designer Rana Eid’s for their work Palestine: A New Narration, combining newsreels showing Palestine between 1914 and 1918 and their original soundscape.

The film lineup featured Vladlena Sandu’s Grozny-set Chechen War set drama Memory; Cyril Aris’ A Sad and Beautiful World, following a love story which unfolds against Beirut’s tumultuous recent history; Hasan Hadi’s Saddam Hussein-era tale The President’s Cake, Kamal Aljafari’s With Hasan In Gaza, and Iranian family secrets drama Oh, What Happy Days! by Homayoun Ghanizadeh, who travelled from Tehran to the festival.

 Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania also attended for a masterclass and screening of her Oscar-nominated Gaza drama The Voice of Hind Rajab, in what was very much a homecoming event for the director after an intense festival and awards circuit tour.

 “She was happy to be here, and we were happy to have her among us,” says Ben Mahmoud. “There was something very familial and intimate in her onstage conversation, even though it was in a packed 800-seat theatre.”

 One of Ben Mahmoud’s main ambitions in her first year as festival director was to create stronger connections between the cinema, virtual reality and video art sections, with the latter curated by Nadia Kaabi-Linke and Timo Kaabi-Linke.

 “I really wanted people to feel like they were all part of the same event, rather than as if they were moving from one festival to another, when they changed sections,” she says.

It is an approach that chimes with Ben Mahmoud’s own multi-faceted career which has spanned dance; theatre and cinema, with recent acting film credits including Nouri Bouzid’s drama The Scarecrows and Mehdi Hmili’s Streams, and 2023 directorial feature debut Backstage, a joint feature with Benkirane which premiered in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori.

 She points to Iranian drama Oh, What Happy Days! as a film that bridges the divide on one level for its inclusion in the cast in a rare acting role of Shirin Neshat, who is better known as a video artist.

 The desire for more fluidity between the sections also sparked the installation Vivre Encore (Live Again). The work is an extension of Swiss director Nicolas Wadimoff’s documentary Who Is Still Alive in which nine former Gaza residents, living as refugees, recount their lives in the Palestinian territory through simple chalk drawings.

 “When I spoke with Nicolas, he said, ‘You know, Afef, I’ve always wanted to do an installation of this film. I have a lot of material’,” recounts Ben Mahmoud. “I said, ‘Well here’s your opportunity.’  The idea is that the viewer follows the installation and ends up in the cinema theatre to see the entire film.”

 Other crossover events include the XR work Under the Sky, by French artist Jérémy Griffaud, whose work combines physical art with immersive technology, who also gave a masterclass.

Ben Mahmoud also highlights the exhibition “Costumes on Stage: Memories of Tunisian Cinema” devoted to the costumes of local classics such as Moufida Tlatli’s The Silences of the Palace, and Selma Baccar’s Khochkhach.

While this year’s opening ceremony was headlined by Tunisian stars Hind Sabry and Dhafer L’Abidine and got plenty of play on the local networks, Ben Mahmoud says the festival will never go down a star-studded red carpet route.

 “The important thing for me is to find the right people and projects which fit this festival,” she says.  “It’s not really a question of making it bigger or smaller, but rather how to stay authentic and never forget or lose sight of its unique focus on the moving image in all its forms.”