TlamessWins Best Feature Film at Gabes Cinema Fenin Tunis

Reaping More International Awards

TlamessWins Best Feature Film at Gabes Cinema Fenin Tunis

The feature film Tlamess by AlaEddine Slimwon the Best Feature Fiction Film Awardat the 2nd Gabes Cinema Fen(April 3-11) in Tunisia. This brings the total international awards won by the film tothree awards.

Due to the current circumstances of the coronavirus crisis (COVID-19), the team behind Gabes Cinema Fen decided to give the second edition of the festival a digital form. However, the festival will resume its usual form during its third edition in 2021.

The film has won the Best Director Award atMarrakech International Film Festival, where it landed its Arab world premiere, and it had its world premiere at the latest edition of the Cannes Film Festival. The film also won the Jury Award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Greece.

Tlamess revolves around S, a young soldier in the Tunisian desert. When his mother dies, he gets a week’s leave and goes back home. However, he never returns to the barracks and becomes the target of a manhunt through the backstreets of his working-class neighborhood, before vanishing into the mountains. Several years later, F, a young woman married to a rich businessman finds out that she’s pregnant. One morning, she leaves her luxurious villa and disappears into the forest.

Written, edited and directed by AlaEddine Slim, Tlamess stars Abdullah Miniawy, Souhir Ben Amara and Khaled Ben Aissa. The crew also includes Sound Engineer MoncefTaleb and DOP Amine Messadi. It is a Tunisian/French production through Exit Productions and Still Moving, with support from the Franco-Tunisian Fund, the Tunisian Ministry of Culture Fund, as well as the Aide aux Cinémas du Monde; a fund managed by the Centre National du Cinéma et de l'ImageAnimée in France, and the World Cinema Fund Europe. MAD Solutions handles the film's distribution in the Arab world.

AlaEddine Slim is a Tunisian filmmaker. He has directed several short films, art videos and feature films, which have been selected and received multiple awards at many international film festivals, including Clermont-Ferrand and the Grand Prix FID Marseille for Babylon.

In 2016, he directed his feature debut film The Last of Us, which took part in numerous international festivals and received wide critical acclaim and several awards, such as the Lion of the Future for Best Technical Contribution at the Venice Film Festival 2016, and the Tanit d’Or at the Carthage Film Festival. Tlamess is his second feature film.