LETTRE À LA PRISON

A young Tunisian arrives in Marseille. The following day, he is supposed to take the train to Paris. He decides against it time and time again and wanders in the streets. Apparently the newcomer is not seeking employment; his family has in fact sent him to help his elder brother who is in aterrible situation: He is accused of murder of a yound woman in Paris.
Lettre à la prison was made in 1969, in Tunis and Marseille. At the time, without any support on the project, the Franco-Tunisian director Marc Scialom had to stop his work before producing a copy. Today, this film, marked by the scars of his rejection, perhaps because of it, is an unrivalled witness to the history of immigration in France; a fiction film of remarkable artistic quality.