Ashkal: The Tunisian Investigation
New Directors/New Films 2023
March 29 - April 9, 2023
In this assured and gripping thriller set in northern Tunis, young detective Fatma (Fatma Oussaifi) investigates a disturbing series of connected deaths—all of them apparent suicides by self-immolation—while combating misogyny in her own profession and larger political pressures.
Q&A with Youssef Chebbi on April 4 and 5
In Tunisian director Youssef Chebbi’s assured and gripping thriller, a young detective named Fatma (Fatma Oussaifi) investigates a disturbing series of connected deaths—all of them apparent suicides by self-immolation. Ashkal (“shapes” in Arabic) is set in the environs of a halted construction site for a district in northern Tunis that never came to be—called the Gardens of Carthage, it had been intended for dignitaries of the country’s former regime before the 2010 revolution. A nocturnal descent, the film uses startling imagery that evokes 21st-century political traumas, most blatantly the death of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi. While Fatma combats misogyny in her own profession and political pressures in the city at large, she begins to succumb to obsession with an increasingly confounding case.
Filmmaker travel generously supported by Unifrance.
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