Machtat
Fall Grants 2022 - Post-Production Stage
Sonia Ben Slama / Feature Documentary / Tunisia, Lebanon, France, Qatar / 2023 / 81 min / Original Language: Arabic / Interests: Drama
Synopsis
In the small town of Mahdia, Tunisia, live Fatma and her two daughters, Najeh and Waffeh. They are Machtat, wedding musicians. They go from one wedding to another to celebrate, sing and bless the young brides. Najeh, the eldest daughter is herself looking for a husband. But she’s not an easy match as a divorced 36-year-old woman with two sons. Since her brother lives under the same roof and watches every step she does, she has no other choice but to meet men on Facebook and talk to them secretly on the phone. As she is finally about to get married, the groom slips away. Meanwhile, her little sister, Waffeh, struggles with her abusive husband and her four kids. She lives a bit far from her mother and sister and has to deal with everyday’s violence. She thinks her husband might end up killing her and she would like to get a divorce. But she doesn’t want to leave the house in which she invested all her machtat incomes. Fatma navigates between her two daughters, praying that things will go better one day.
Credits
- Director
- Sonia Ben Slama
- Screenwriter
- Sonia Ben Slama
- Producer
- Tania El Khoury
- Production Company
- Khamsin Films
About the Director
Sonia Ben Slama is a Tunisian-French documentary filmmaker. She grew up in Paris, where she studied Art and Cinema at University Paris 3-Sorbonne-Nouvelle. During her second Master’s degree at University Panthéon-Sorbonne, she directed two short documentaries produced by Serge Lalou for Les Films d’Ici and Catherine Derosier-Pouchou for the Louvre museum. In 2015, she directed her first feature documentary ‘Maktoub’, produced by Les films de la Caravane (Djerba Doc Days - Grand Jury Prize, Zagora Film Festival - Special distinction from jury, AFIDOK - Grand Jury Prize). She’s currently working on two feature documentaries, ‘Machtat’ (Chicken & Egg Pictures Lab 2020, MFI Script 2 Film Workshops Project Development Award from Visions du Réel) and '316 North Main Street’ (in development).