Remparts d'argile

Jean-Louis Bertuccelli weaves together two stories: that of a sit-down strike in the village of Chebika and that of a nineteen-year-old woman adopted into the community. For a long time, little happens, as the film, which is based on a book by sociologist Jean Duvignaud, slips into observational mode, unfolding the intermeshing of landscape and life in southern Tunisia without dialogue: women collecting water and weaving, children at school, men working in a quarry. When the workers refuse to sell their goods to the dealer, he calls on the military. Capital and violence encounter the resistance of the forces of production. Bertuccelli, who had to shoot his film in Algeria because of reservations on the part of the Tunisian government, stays with the perspective of the exploited without glossing over the violence within their community. (Berlinale)