The magnificent film El Jaida by director and co-writer Salma Baccar, a deputy in the Tunisian Parliament and an intellectual activist of the Jasmine Revolution, received the first prize at the Carros Festival.
The film recalls the life of a generation of women, our ancestors, and the fortune of Tunisian women today who have freed themselves from the yoke of archaic laws. It takes us from a dark past to a tumultuous present. In the meantime, some rights have been won, and others remain to be preserved or conquered.
‘El Jaïda’ is a film against forgetting that plunges us into the 1950s, shortly before independence, to tell us the story of four women, which is also that of many others of that generation who were sent to Dar Jouad, a patriarchal institution created in the 17th century to punish them for being disobedient to their husbands.
“El Jaida” immerses us in the lives of the women at the Dar Jouad detention house. There, women reside, sharing their sorrows and painful stories as well as cheerful anecdotes.
Of different ages and social conditions, they are forced to live together, enduring the authority and injustices imposed by their jailer, the Jaida.
The film is also a journey through the not-so-distant memory of Tunisia, just before independence. It is against forgetting because it highlights a pivotal era in Tunisia where women were oppressed and stripped of their rights.
Salma Baccar, who wrote the screenplay, brings together a variety of actors such as Wajiha Jendoubi, Souhir Ben Amara, Raouf Ben Amor, Fatma Ben Saidane, Selma Mahjoubi, Najoua Zouhir, Khaled Houissa, and Taoufik El Ayeb, etc.
