Under the Fig Trees

Distributed by Film MovementProduced by Erige Sehiri and Didar DomehriDirected by Erige Sehiri2021, Streaming, 93 mins Under the Fig Trees premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, 2021. It was selected for the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes the following May and played a number of other major festivals later that year, including Toronto. It made its first appearance on U.S. soil in January 2023 at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and finally achieved a limited theatrical release that October. Now, thanks to Film Movement, it’s available on DVD and via streaming. A movie with this kind of history raises two questions: 1) what’s “wrong” with it that prevented it from reaching American screens for such a long time? 2) What does it get so right that enabled it to persevere and ultimately succeed? In the case of Under the Fig Trees both answers are the same: it’s a story with a Garden of Eden setting that doesn’t go where you expect, which will frustrate some audiences but delight others. The film, an international co-production set in Tunisia, begins just before sunrise with pockets of mostly female workers talking amongst themselves in Arabic as they wait for the owner of a fig orchard to pick them up for a day’s labor. Two of the most important character dynamics are established when “the boss” (Fedi Ben Achour) arrives in his pickup truck: a young woman named Fidé (Fide Fdhili) automatically climbs into the passenger seat, while her little sister Melek (Feten Fdhili) and a young man named Abdou (Abdelhak Mrabti) exchange shy smiles as they crowd into the back with the rest of the workers. We learn more about the significance of the latter when they arrive at the orchard: Melek and Abdou used to date, but then he left town for five years following the death of his parents and has only now returned. Abdou’s lack of experience picking fruit provides a perfect excuse for an older worker named Leila (Leila Ouhebi) to provide a tutorial on how workers place leaves at the bottom of their baskets so that the figs don’t get bruised, identify which ones are ripe, and use a stick with a curved end to gently pull high branches within reach without breaking them, which is a cardinal sin: “breaking a branch is like breaking an arm,” she tells him. Additional plot points are carefully parceled out over the first third of the film through intimate conversations shot mostly in closeup with a handheld camera. The boss quizzes Leila about a robbery, but she hasn’t heard anything; a young woman named Sana (Ameni Fdhili) who is engaged to another worker named Firas (Firas Amri) talks openly about how she wishes he was more conservative; and Fidé concedes that she finds the boss cute, but relates the story of a girl who was impregnated by a different boss by way of explaining why she doesn’t trust him. “You can’t tell who he really wants,” she concludes. “He’s like a stray dog.” After the boss catches a worker named Gaith (Gaith Mendassi) breaking a branch and fires him, signs begin to mount that a storm is coming: portentous music plays, Gaith’s nose begins to bleed, someone faints, and we discover who the thief that the boss is looking for is. It’s at this point that Erige Sehiri, an experienced documentarian directing her first feature, makes something of a bold gamble. Rather than building to a climax, she instead fills the remainder of the movie with a whole series of emotional events that the individual characters involved in them will surely remember as pivotal moments in their lives, but which don’t combine to make a singular statement the way many narrative films do. Instead, they amount to something that feels a lot like a typical day: Sana accuses Fidé of flirting with Firas; we learn why Abdou has returned, and he and Melek finally talk; the boss shows his true colors; Leila sings a mournful lament for an unrequited love in her past; the theft is uncovered. As Under the Fig Trees ends with the workers happily clapping and singing in the back of the truck on their way home as the sun sets, viewers used to being spoon fed morals may wonder what the point was. Most, however, will appreciate the way it provides insight into life in contemporary Tunisia and leaves them free to ascribe meanings of their own to what they’ve seen. Recommended for all collections which have a global scope as a fine addition from North Africa or that focus on labor issues or women’s rights. Awards:Best Film, Namur International Festival of French-Speaking Film; Winner, International New Talent Competition, Taipei Film Festival; Best Director - Pingyao International Film Festival

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