Marinette Pendola

Marinette Pendola is a writer born in Tunisia, but her parents come from sicily. Her Grangrandfather left Sciacca, a town near Agrigento.

January 2011 : the revolution bursts in Tunisia, my father’s country. The Tunisian people scream in a rage and I, here in Paris, can feel their revolt vibrating in my heart.

An intimate portrayal of Tunisia’s architectural landscape and its atmospheres, memories and traditions. The film appropriates ethnographic documentaries on architecture and rural life in Tunisia, sourced from France’s national audiovisual archive (INA). Scenes from 1940s newsreels produced by Les Actualités Françaises are combined with new footage from the same sites, including Matmata, Douiret and Tameghza.

Tunisia itself is the subject; we wanted to render the genius of the site. Tunisia is almost the central character of this little film: we see the relation of the city to the sea, the traces that bear witness to its foundation, the remains of Carthage, the symbolism of the recently discovered Medina coin … The splendours of the house interiors and courtyards are associated with a scene of origin, what psychoanalysis calls a primal scene. Entering these houses opens up a world peopled by women: the child’s ‘homecoming’ in the hands of women is staged as an abduction, playing doubly on fascination and terror. These places were mine, from my childhood, they can be found almost intact – it’s the return of the exile visiting the kingdom. I let Ruiz discover all this, and immediately that led him to echoes and resonances ranging from Spain to Chile.

A portrait of the Director’s maternal grandmother, Eliane, a French woman who lived her entire life in Tunisia. The film shows her last moments at home with her family before her passing due to Alzheimer's disease.

The Real Story of Fake Democracy.  Filmed over three years in five countries, FREEDOM FOR THE WOLF is an epic investigation into the new regime of illiberal democracy.  From the young students of Hong Kong, to a rapper in post-Arab Spring Tunisia and the viral comedians of Bollywood, we discover how people from every corner of the globe are fighting the same struggle. They are fighting against elected leaders who trample on human rights, minorities, and their political opponents.

Born to an Algerian father and a Sicilian mother in Tunisia, I have always been wealthy of three cultures. This motherland is where were born my Algerian ancestors when it was called Ifriqya but also my Sicilian grand-parents whose parents were part of the important migration flux of the beginning of the last century. A reservoir of workforce by the thousands reached the shores of this "promised land". A hundred years later, I embark on a quest to rediscover my Sicilian family, exiled for the past sixty years, scattered between Italy and France.