Franco-Tunisian director Erige Sehiri has released her new drama Prometiendo el Cielo in Spanish cinemas, offering a portrait of Sub-Saharan African migration in Tunisia.
The film, which follows her debut feature Under the Fig Trees, tells the story of four African women navigating displacement, personal loss, and survival in North Africa.
Sehiri initially did not intend to address Tunisia's political situation when writing her second feature. The director acknowledged that the narrative she was writing became caught up by reality as social tensions surrounding migrant communities escalated.
Origins of the project
The filmmaker had researched migrant communities in North Africa for several years prior to production. While working on a documentary project in 2016, she met young individuals from Senegal, Congo, and Ivory Coast who had moved to Tunisia to study.
During her research, Sehiri highlighted a statistic regarding continental movement, noting that roughly 80 percent of African migrants travel within Africa's borders, while only 20 percent emigrate to Europe.
These real-life encounters shaped the main figures of the film: Marie, a former journalist turned pastor; Jolie, a student with legal documentation; and Naney, a mother who left her child behind in Ivory Coast.
Characters and emotional trauma
The fourth major character, a young Mediterranean shipwreck survivor named Kenza, was introduced near the end of the writing process. Sehiri learned of a five-year-old girl who had drowned at sea during a migration attempt, an event that deeply affected her.
Sehiri explained that she was devastated upon learning of the child's death and wanted to bring her back to life and honor her memory through the character of Kenza.
As an orphan of uncertain origin, Kenza becomes the emotional center of the film. The director described Kenza as a daughter to all three older women, representing a danger to Marie, a challenge to Naney, and a consolation prize to Jolie.
Sehiri drew on her background as a documentarian to portray trauma on screen. Having observed individuals disconnect or fall asleep when confronting extreme experiences, she incorporated this behavior into a scene where Kenza falls asleep as Marie paints a hopeful future for her.
Sehiri explained that when something becomes too difficult to hear, people disconnect from reality.
Solidarity and displacement
Rather than treating migration as an abstract political issue, the film grounds the experience in four concrete lives. The women live together, rely on each other, and face conflicts while attempting to find their place in a country that is not fully theirs.
The director summarized the group dynamics as a balance between solidarity and individuality, showing women who remain together while each pursuing her own path.
