Background
She was born in Sidi Bou Saïd suburb of the capital Tunis in 1947.
director film editor politician film producer
She was born in Sidi Bou Saïd suburb of the capital Tunis in 1947.
She was the first Arab woman to direct a full featured-film (The Silences of the Palace) in the Arab World. She said that she discovered her love to cinema with the help of her philosophy teacher. After graduating from the French Institut des hautes études cinématographiques in 1968, she returned to Tunisia where she worked as a film editor for different Tunisian films.
She directed her first featured-film The Silences of the Palace in 1994.
Her second film, The Season of Men, was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. Following the downfall of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011 she was appointed Minister of Culture in the provisional government.