Director Mohamed Ben Attia – winner of Berlinale Silver Bear for Best Debut for his film Heidi – has visited Karlovy Vary for the first time to present his new film Dear Son. The film follows the story of an over-protective father whose son suddenly disappears and the parents find out in horror that their son has joined ISIS in Syria. Nonetheless, this is not a film about religious fundamentalism, as the director clarified.
“Incidentally, a family lived in the house where we were shooting the film, whose son had left for Syria despite previously being a football player, drinking alcohol and seeing girls. Like the one in our movie, his father kept repeating to us that his son was not a terrorist. He could not understand how this could have happened. He wanted us not to show the family in the film too religious or too poor,” Ben Attia noted.
While it is sadly not uncommon for young Tunisians to leave for Syria, Dear Son does not depict the awakening of fundamentalism, but rather a state when you want to get rid of everything to an extreme level. “My film is about the difficulty of pursuing happiness, being a good husband, father or son, certain weariness, loneliness and problematic co-habitation with the others”, the director explained. Another discussion with the director will follow the film screening at the Drahomíra Cinema on Monday evening.
Dear Son premiered at this year’s Cannes festival. Its director Attia is a leading personality of Tunisian film industry, which has been rising since the revolution. “We have the freedom to speak about everything and the number of movies made is increasing. While before the revolution, there were two or three films a year, now the number can reach sixteen.”
