On the margins of Tunisia’s largest film festival, a journalist looks at the challenges to an ongoing experiment in the country’s prisons
December 2024 in Tunis, Cité de Culture:
“The children couldn’t hide their excitement”, notes journalist Malek Zaghdoudi during a screening of Naoufel Klach’s short film El-Sakia: “3D animations are extremely popular with this age group.”
Zaghdoudi attended the tenth edition of أيام قرطاج السينمائية في السجون (Carthage’s Cinema Days in Prison), a lesser-known film festival which took place adjacent to the 35th Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage (JCC) festival in the Tunisian capital, for the alternative newspaper Nawaat. Spurred on by “the overwhelming happiness on the children’s faces”, the reporter chose a slightly different approach to his festival coverage, digging deeper into similar initiatives in juvenile detention centres and other correctional facilities across the country.
Zaghdoudi, a journalist specialising in human rights’ issues, estimates that c. 300 young offenders under the age of 18 are currently in juvenile rehabilitation centres across the country. While all of these facilities offer access to radio broadcasts and library books, Zaghdoudi notes, those in closer proximity to the capital benefit from “the larger concentration of cultural offers, such as the cultural centre, the Cité de Culture, and the science centre, Cité des Sciences”. Official guidelines from the General Directorate for Prisons and Rehabilitation (DGPR) state that young offenders may partake in cultural activities, including access to music, theatre, and cinema, literature, visual arts, under the supervision of specifically trained staff and NGO employees. (Nawaat contacted the ministry for an official statement on the article, but the request remained unanswered).
Juvenile detention facilities in Tunisia first began incorporating access to cultural activities into their life at the turn of the century. Zaghdoudi speaks to JCC’s Ashraf Lamar, the person who oversees the festival’s collaboration with correctional facilities. Lamar recalls the first three screenings in 2000 in the Borj Erroumi and Mahdia prisons, in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice. Lamar talks about the positive impact of films on young offenders, allowing them not only a chance to stimulate their imagination and build bridges to the outside world to which they will return, but also easing the burden of disciplinary punishment.
Following the Tunisian Revolution in 2011 the trickle became a flood: film directors, actors, and critics all began holding regular screening and events in prisons. Critic Mohamed Nasser Sardi remembers “the unique (non-deterrent or punitive) approach” of these events. Others followed. The Tunisian International Human Rights Festival began organising screenings and talks inside prisons from 2013. Some of these events, such as film director Kamal Rokia’s collaboration with the Mahdia Prison, metamorphosed into a theatre play and the production of ten short films.
Zaghdoudi’s article contains a short clip from the opening night of Carthage Cinema Days in Prison from November 2018, co-organised with the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the DGPR. That year, over 500 inmates in Mornaguia prison attended the screening of Najib Belkadhi’s film Regarde Moi (Look at Me). After the screening, the offenders took part in the Q&A, as shown in the clip, sharing their interpretations of the film and asking related questions.
Zaghdoudi notes the widely recognised therapeutic effect of the arts: especially cinema, theatre and sculptural work. “The Spanish are pioneers in this field”, notes Zaghdoudi. There are similar initiatives in France (Les Yeux de l’Ouïe) and Lebanon (Zeina Daccahe’s Catharsis, the Lebanese Centre for Drama Therapy). In 2016, the Tunisian Government set up a three-way collaboration between the government, NGOs and Les Yeux de l’Ouïe in a meeting chaired by Kamal Rokia. Such things became much more complicated after civil society was dramatically sidelined by President Kais Saied on 25 July 2021.
Despite this, Nawaat quotes Nasser Sardi waxing lyrical about the “cinematic and sociological approaches during film discussions” at facilities in Bizerte, Gabes and Tataouine, and the way film has opened up the possibilities of philosophical discussion. Zaghdoudi is far less optimistic about the possibilities of transformative impact amongst the prison population given other conditions: “these cultural initiatives can in no way obscure the poor conditions in most prisons and correctional facilities… Several prisons and rehabilitation centres have serious overcrowding rates from 150 and 250%, as well as a high rate of recidivism (over 40%).” The social stigma that follows former inmates wherever they go makes things even harder.
In the end, Zaghdoudi writes with sadness “despite the sincerity of the sponsors, ambitious rehabilitation initiatives such as the Carthage Cinema Days in Prison are nothing more than dust in the eyes”.
The full original reportage by Malek Zaghdoudi was published in Arabic on 31 January 2025.
It is available here: ‘أحلام الثقافة وراء القضبان واكراهات الواقع, nawaat.org
Nawaat.org is an independent, Tunisia-related news platform and magazine.
