Selected to open the United Nations section against the Cannes Film Festival, the intimately designed drama of the French Tunisian director Erige Sehiri “promised Sky” follows four generations of Ivorian immigrant women while they find solidarity, conflicts and sometimes a feeling of displacement in the company of the other. Female relations are sufficiently complicated as they, even between those on a playground. But in “Sky promised”, they are more thorny because none of the women is equal to a socio-economic point of view in their house adopted in Tunisia.
“Sky promised” begins on a note of matriarchal unit, no separation. Using the same aesthetic a purely documentary at the heart of its previous characteristic, “Under the Fig Trees”, Sehiri drops the public in the life of Mary (Aïssa Maïga), Naney (Debora Lobe Naney) and Jolie (Laetitia Ky), while the three roommates care about a little girl.
The girl is Kenza (Estelle Kenza Dogbo), a inappropriate child who seems to have miraculously survived a migrant sinking before the three women find her. A former journalist now serving his community as a pastor after 10 years in Tunisia, Marie decides to open her house in Kenza as she did for Naney – a animated undocumented mother who left her child at home three years ago in the hope of finding a better future for her family in Tunisia – and pretty, a passionate student and the only documented member of the group.
“PROMIS SKY” vaguely reflects real events and feels visually and texturally truthful thanks to the authentic point of view of Sehiri and the poetic objective of filmmaker Frida Marzouk. The film often looks like a Mazy tapestry in mood and situations, rather than a traditional story.
Sehiri does not necessarily try to tell a carefully organized story revolving around the three actions of women after Kenza suddenly joins their ranks. Instead, she leaves the chaotic disorder of their lives take place in an organic way, through a disposition with casualness which sometimes feels disorderly and random. Sehiri’s film is added to something bigger than the sum of its parts, becoming a unique drama on marginalized African immigrant women who are fighting for their dignity and their place not in Europe (the usual setting for many films with similar theme), but on their own continent, Africa.
For Marie, this struggle consists in providing spiritual leadership to its community, praying for strength and perseverance, and preach compassion and forgiveness, while distributing food and supplies to those who need it. For Naney, the struggle joins all the necessary means – even if it could invite trouble – while hoping to bring his child to Tunisia one day. Elsewhere, Jolie is motivated by different motivations, trusting her privileges as a documented resident in Tunisia. Soon, she learns that racism and prejudice in the country do not save it, whatever the papers it has.
There are also male parallel players, including Marie’s antipathetic owner, Ismael (Mohamed Grayaâ), who benefits from the lack of Marie’s options by refusing to make simple improvements in her modest accommodation. And then there is the Tunisian friend of Naney, Foued (Foued Zaazaa), providing him with a well -necessary camaraderie (so deficient) in the random moments of life and special days like birthdays. The blind friend of Marie Noa (Touré Blamassi), who judges all situations with intelligent clarity and advises Marie accordingly, brings a sweet serenity to history. (Sehiri leans too much in non -sophisticated symbolism with the NOA, dangerously getting closer to characterize a handicap as if it was a mystical characteristic.) Someone else who obtains the end of the stick is Kenza. After suddenly presenting the character, the writers Sehiri, Anna Ciennik and Malika Cécile Louati unfortunately treat her as a reflection after the fact; It almost has the impression that they had trouble finding a real goal for Kenza in history, missing an opportunity with a gifted child who will quietly break your heart with his final scene.
“PROMIS SKY” is at its strongest when Sehiri approaches a neoralist style in the shooting of the life forces of street life, composing his documentary instincts. He also has a punch when Sehiri highlights how deeply rooted (and similar) are deeply rooted in the world. In a scene, for example, we learn that some Tunisians are spreading false rumors that migrants eat domestic cats – it is an accusation that could recall comparable alarming lies that spread to the United States less than a year ago.
The film also shines through the painful performance of Naney, and it delivers an overwhelming monologue and stage thief towards the end of the way a better life did not find it despite all its hard work, its belief and its perseverance. Even in its most trembling moments, “Sky promised” undertakes to honor that the grain and against the Odds fight with dignity and humanism.
