Moufida Tlatli

Director

“Traditionally in the Arab film world a girl works in continuity or is an editor. I had never thought of making films. I loved editing.”

Biography

Moufida Tlatli (born in Sidi Bou Saïd in 1947) is a Tunisian film director. She was the first Arab woman to direct a full featured-film (The Silences of the Palace) in the Arab World. She was born in Sidi Bou Saïd suburb of the capital Tunis in 1947. She said that she discovered her love to cinema with the help of her philosophy teacher.

After graduating from the French Institut des hautes études cinématographiques in 1968, she returned to Tunisia where she worked as a film editor for different Tunisian films.

She directed her first featured-film The Silences of the Palace in 1994. The film was acclaimed critically and won several awards : Cannes Film Festival’s Golden Camera, the Golden Tanit of Carthage, British Film Institute Awards’ Sutherland Trophy, Toronto Film Festival’s International Critics’ Award and Istanbul International Film Festival’s Golden Tulip.

Her second film, The Season of Men, was screened in the Un Certain Regard… read more