To see at the cinema: Zahia makes a big comeback in ‘Unexpected Tenderness’

After Goodbye Morocco and Lola Pater, discover The Air of the Sea Makes Free, Nadir Mokneche’s latest film.

The feature film, presented at the recent Angoulême Francophone Film Festival, takes place today in Rennes. Said (Yusuf Abi-Ayad) still lives with his parents. She has a secret affair with Vincent (Arturo Jussi Perrier). Unable to stand up to his father (Zinedine Sualem), he agrees to an arranged marriage with Hajira (Kenza Fortas).

After an unsuccessful love affair and some run-ins with the law, he too left to obey his mother. Trapped by their families, Saeed and Hajira unite against themselves to regain their freedom, each on their own.

The Air of the Sea Sets Free is the fifth feature film of the young actor Kenza FortasShe was discovered in Shehérazade, which won her a César for Most Promising Actress in 2019. The latter then appeared in Bac Nord by Cédric Jimenez and in two episodes of Franck Gastambide’s series, Validé.

Here he stars opposite Youssef Abi-Ayad, whose first feature film this is. The actor has already proven himself on the stage, especially with Christophe Honoré, and has staged several plays.

“shame on clichés”

Said’s character was born from the observation that Nadir Mokneche did today on the representation of gay, Arab and French men. He explains in the film’s press kit: “If you type those three words into a search engine, you’ll see most pornographic images, fetish images associated with the virgin thug stereotype. in France.

I thus imagined a young man from an integrated family who finds himself caught up in a cultural vice—his homosexuality marginalizes him in the family, but his ancestry helps him in the sex market, provided he imitates the bastard he is not. Syed uses photos to flirt. He is their victim and uses them at the same time. At the same time, there was the idea of ​​an arranged marriage for a boy, which took the opposite view from the commonly presented situation.

Like his previous films, the director tries to destroy prejudices about the representation of North Africans in French cinema.

Zahia, again in the cinema

The film also marks Zahia Dehari’s return to the camera, four years after Rebecca Zlotowski’s Easy Girl. It was after watching this film that the director offered Fariza the role.

He explains: “Zahia Dehari plays a different mother to Saeed and Hajira, and together with Vincent Heine, who plays the husband, they make a kind of fantasy couple, at peace, whether in his masculinity or femininity. Zahia is a confident and free womanHe adds: “I wanted to embody her mother, away from the iconography associated with her.”

Sea Air Sets Free is divided into several chapters. Nadir Mokneche explains that this sequence became clearer during the editing of the film. “JI wanted a simple story that got to the point and the theme was explained from the start. I liked the idea that the film opens in medias res and we were carried away by the wind of this story: the die is cast immediately, the fate of the characters is sealed, here they get married. what will they do We find them surrounded by activity during the wedding, before we find them alone, facing their new life.

Since this is an arranged marriage, each of them, for different reasons, agreed to fulfill their mothers’ request and be emancipated. But the film is also about second-generation immigration.

The filmmaker states: “Said’s parents are my age, they are from this emigration, their parents came to France after World War II. These characters are petty bourgeois who want to keep their rank at all costs. We face the fear of rejection, the fear of falling apart. The butcher brings this family together. They work together, meet each other on Sundays; Parents do their best to be “good people”. Matriarchy and patriarchy unite this family, and this has its limits.”

The sea air frees you It is currently showing in cinemas.