Tlamess

The woods have always been a place beyond society. Even in times of their exploitation and cultivation, they remain an uncertainty, containing nightmares, myths, and fairy tales. Whoever comes from the woods returns. But to where? In his most dystopian work to date, Ala Eddine Slim shows an escape to the forest. Despite its dark colour palette reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s worlds and a score evoking nocturnal ghosts by “Oiseaux-Tempête”, a utopia lurks in the dimness beneath the trees. A utopia as a form togetherness far from modern society, a sort of symbiosis with nature. S, a soldier who has deserted, meets F, a pregnant woman who leaves her husband and wealthy life. Slim is just as interested in their meeting as why both of them escaped. He shows people being sick of their lives, a tiredness, a fragility. It is in an almost magical or at least Kubrickian forest with metaphorical snakes and black portals in which wordless communication takes place that shows how the woods are not only a place of uncertainty and fear, but also of resistance and the creation of new life. In other words: It’s where we came from. In this sense, the film is a true origin story. (Patrick Holzapfel)

In the presence of Ala Eddine Slim.