As Tunisia heads to its first free presidential election, can secular and religious forces manage to work together to create a democracy that satisfies all its citizens?
The Tunisian Revolution of 2010-2011 is recognized as the beginning of the Arab Spring, but as has been the case in other post-revolutionary nations, the road to true freedom is not instantaneous, especially in a country that has never known democracy. To make matters even more complicated, how will the region’s deep-seated religious beliefs come into play? This is the question facing the protagonists of director/producer Jessie Deeter’s film, which follows Bassem Bouguerra, a secular revolutionary, and Jawhara Ettis, a university professor and member of the moderate Islamist party. Even under ousted President Ben Ali’s dictatorial rule, Tunisia espoused secular freedom, but some Tunisians seek a turn to more fundamentalist policies to bring the country in line with Islamic law. As the country tries to set forth its future course with a general election later this year, Deeter and her Tunisian-born co-producer Sara Maamouri follow Bassem and Jawhara to reveal what democracy will look like in a country pulled in separate directions.
Deeter and Maamouri have just under three weeks left in their Kickstarter campaign for final production funds, and could use help to meet their $39,000 target. For more information and to keep updated on the project, visit its Facebook page.
While the Western world seems to lose interest in the Arab Spring just as soon as the dictators abdicate and the mass protests end, there’s always much more to the story on the horizon, as has been borne out in recent developments in Egypt. Tunisia is no different, and the filmmakers have the rare opportunity to document the radical, and inevitably messy, changes being made as a the nation remakes itself after decades under autocratic rule. Wisely, they’ve constrained their project to a limited number of subjects, avoiding the trap of creating a survey film that attempts to represent everyone but more often ends up a watered down exercise in futility. Their protagonists are intelligent, articulate, and, it appears, fundamentally in opposition, making for a potentially fascinating, and representative, look at the dilemmas of modern state-building in the region.
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