“If you’d taken those pills, this wouldn’t have happened. Now it’s my daughter who’s on medication,” says his mother-in-law.
Rafik (Majd Mastoura) has just been released from prison after serving a four year sentence. We glimpse the cause of it briefly at the start: the abrupt episode of violence in which he smashed up his workplace, terrifying his colleagues. We also see an incident in the prison where he climbed up high and leapt from a fourth story window. There are scars on his face. Yassine (Walid Bouchhioua) is at school, his mother-in-law tells him. He’s doing well there. As for Yosr (Rania Agrebi), she doesn’t love him anymore – but Rafik has a plan. He will take both of them away, behind the mountains. He has something he needs to show them, and then they will understand.
In his way, Rafik has all the...
Rafik (Majd Mastoura) has just been released from prison after serving a four year sentence. We glimpse the cause of it briefly at the start: the abrupt episode of violence in which he smashed up his workplace, terrifying his colleagues. We also see an incident in the prison where he climbed up high and leapt from a fourth story window. There are scars on his face. Yassine (Walid Bouchhioua) is at school, his mother-in-law tells him. He’s doing well there. As for Yosr (Rania Agrebi), she doesn’t love him anymore – but Rafik has a plan. He will take both of them away, behind the mountains. He has something he needs to show them, and then they will understand.
In his way, Rafik has all the...
- 5/31/2024
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Catatonic with a bright red swollen eye, middle-aged Rafik (Majd Mastoura) sits handcuffed inside a police station in the aftermath of a violent outburst at his soul-crushing office job. Whatever gripe eroded his sanity doesn’t matter as much now, since the incident, including a suicide attempt, unearthed a supernatural ability he possesses. An unpredictable oddity of a film, “Behind the Mountains” sees seasoned Tunisian writer-director Mohamed Ben Attia step away from the straightforward social realist drama of his previous festival standouts “Dear Son” and “Hedi,” while staying steadfast in his interest for emotionally intricate protagonists and the complications of parent-child relationships.
Four years after the breakdown that landed him in prison, Rafik kidnaps his son Yassine (Walid Bouchhioua), an impressionable grade-school kid who barely remembers his father, and drives away from the capital and into the open spaces of the mountainous countryside. In brief exchanges, we learn of Rafik...
Four years after the breakdown that landed him in prison, Rafik kidnaps his son Yassine (Walid Bouchhioua), an impressionable grade-school kid who barely remembers his father, and drives away from the capital and into the open spaces of the mountainous countryside. In brief exchanges, we learn of Rafik...
- 12/2/2023
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Variety Film + TV
Move over, Richard Donner.
In “Behind the Mountains,” premiering in Venice’s Horizons section, Mohamed Ben Attia makes sure “you’ll believe a man can fly” once again. Although it might not be as graceful.
“I didn’t want him to be like a superhero or fly like Superman. He is floating, struggling with gravity,” he says about his protagonist Rafik, who gives up his entire life – and even ends up in jail – chasing an impossible dream. But there is one place where dreams come to life and he wants his son to experience it too.
The Tunisian director, also behind “Hedi” and “Dear Son,” was hesitant to play with supernatural elements at first.
“I don’t have any technical background. I am not technical at all! But I’ve become obsessed with this man, who extracts himself from his community in such a radical way. I kept seeing an...
In “Behind the Mountains,” premiering in Venice’s Horizons section, Mohamed Ben Attia makes sure “you’ll believe a man can fly” once again. Although it might not be as graceful.
“I didn’t want him to be like a superhero or fly like Superman. He is floating, struggling with gravity,” he says about his protagonist Rafik, who gives up his entire life – and even ends up in jail – chasing an impossible dream. But there is one place where dreams come to life and he wants his son to experience it too.
The Tunisian director, also behind “Hedi” and “Dear Son,” was hesitant to play with supernatural elements at first.
“I don’t have any technical background. I am not technical at all! But I’ve become obsessed with this man, who extracts himself from his community in such a radical way. I kept seeing an...
- 9/4/2023
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
"You saw me fly, Yassine, right?" Luxbox has revealed a festival promo trailer for a film titled Behind the Mountains from Tunisia, which is premiering at the 2023 Venice Film Festival currently underway in Italy. This looks like one of the most exciting discoveries of the festival, though not many people are paying attention to it yet - maybe this trailer will help build some buzz. The vague description says – the film is about a man who violently breaks free from his banal environment, evading society with its principles, codes and institutions. Majd Mastoura stars as Rafik. "It's the story of a man who violently breaks free from his banal environment, subtracting himself from society with its principles, codes, and institutions." He takes his son to show him something incredible. Also starring Walid Bouchhioua, Samer Bisharat, Selma Zghidi, and Helmi Dridi. This trailer gives a big hint that it's the ability...
- 9/1/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
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