Critics reviews

Majd Mastoura scored the Best Actor Silver Bear for Mohammed Ben Attia's agreeable-enough variation on Finding Miss Right, Hedi, a film so innocuous that even its supporters took it only semi-seriously.

Majd Mastoura's impressively understated performance as the indecisive protagonist, hesitantly wondering whether he can break with tradition and go against the wishes of his mother, won him the Berlinale's best actor prize, while Ben Attia proved deserving of the best first feature gong for a film that builds slowly but steadily to scenes of real emotional intensity.

The chemistry between the couple is so natural that Hedi’s transformation is genuinely poignant... The dialogue becomes increasingly more explosive as the characters start to reveal their true feelings; it is a treat to watch them play off one another.

The originality of "Hedi" lies not only in the fact that Ben Attia tells a story of emancipation of a man from the traditions that generally stifle women first and foremost, but the protagonist’s desire for independence inspired by the freedom of a woman... [A] sensitive and subtle portrait of Tunisian society.

It's a good long hour before Hediachieves narrative liftoff, and frankly, even with its laudably twisted ending, all that ultimately set Hedi apart is the way it serves as a window onto contemporary Tunisia. Classic festival fare.

Though pleasingly rooted in its time and place, it’s an easily accessible story that has been told in many countries... Quiet but pungent and featuring vibrant performances, it offers further evidence that the rebirth of Tunisian cinema is underway

Adept and absorbing... Those unacquainted with Tunisian current events will appreciate an intimate relationship film with characters they can cotton to, while others will spot not just the nation’s economic plight, but also pre- and post-Revolution parallels in terms of people numbly doing as they’ve always been told vs. those breaking free from expectation.

[The] generational and ideological clash simmers quietly beneath the film’s romantic surface and lends to its contemporary tone, perhaps quietly capturing the zeitgeist of modern Tunisia at the same time.