Mehdi M. Barsaoui’s family drama A Son” (Un Fils) starring Sami Bouajila opens in the US on Friday, December 10 at Film Forum in New York and Facets Multimedia in Chicago. The film will open in LA at the Laemmle Theaters on Dec. 17.
“A Son” (>Un Fils), Barsaoui’s debut narrative feature, premiered at the 2019 Venice Film Festival, where Bouajila won the “Horizons” section award for Best Actor, then featured at the 2019 BFI London Film Festival and 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam. Previously, Sami Bouajila won the Award for Best Actor at Cannes Film Festival for Days Of Glory (2006) and the César Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Witnesses (2007).
In late summer 2011, following the Arab Spring and the fall of Tunisia’s 24-year-long corrupt regime, an affluent, French-educated family is weekending in the scenic southeast. When an attack by armed Islamic extremists thrusts Fares (Sami Bouajila in a 2021 César Best Actor award winning performance), Meriem (Najla Ben Abdallah), and their 11-year-old son into a series of intense shock waves both physical and emotional, Fares becomes quietly, wrenchingly torn between a father’s love, a man’s pride, and a thinking citizen’s moral center – amidst looming regional instability that does not discriminate.
Watch the trailer for A Son (Un Fils)