IN QUESTA PAGINA:
- Backstage by Afef Ben Mahmoud, Khalil Benkirane
- Quitter la nuit by Delphine Girard
BACKSTAGE
Directed by Afef Mahmoud, Khalil Benkiran Morocco, Tunisia, 2023 Running time 102‘
The dance company Without Borders is concluding its tour of Morocco. In the penultimate performance in a city located on the Atlas mountain range, Aida (Afef Ben Mahmoud) provokes Hedi (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui), her partner in life and on stage, who in turn hits and injures her in front of the other dancers. Hoping to save the last performance, the group leaves immediately to track down the only available doctor in the area and treat Aida. On the way, to avoid a monkey, the bus skids and miraculously stops on the side of the road. The bus has no spare tire, and the crew strand in the forest. Outside, the full moon illuminates a majestic and eerie landscape. Here starts a kind of road movie: instead of waiting for the driver to return, the entire troupe walks into the forest to reach the village. Through that route, the true face of the characters will emerge.
Tiziana Leone
QUITTER LA NUIT
Belgio, Canada, Francia, 2023, Director Delphine Girard, Cast Selma Alaoui, Guillaume Duhesme, Veerle Baetens, Anne Dorval, Adèle Wismes, Gringe, Alba Casado, Running Time 108′
In 2020, Belgian Delphine Girard got an Oscar nomination with her previous Une sœur, a short film of which this Quitter la nuit is a kind of sequel. At the time, after listening to a U.S. 911 call, the Québécoise filmmaker who grew up in Belgium had dealt with the destructive effects caused by sexual violence and remained dissatisfied. “I had lacked the time to explore the complexity of the theme and to tell the characters’ stories as I would have liked,” she explains. – It is necessary to understand the effects of assault, the causes that drive a person to commit abuse.” What he tried to do in Quitter la Nuit, his first feature film, depicts without rhetoric the police investigation revolving around violence and succeeds in restoring the saving power of a female partnership between the rape victim and the policewoman who responds to her call for help.
Mattia Pasquini
