A desperate young Tunisian man struggles against impossible odds in Lotfy Nathan’s debut fiction feature Harka, whose leading man Adam Bessa won best actor prize in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at the Cannes film festival last week. An American documentary maker best known for The 12 O’Clock Boys (2013), Nathan takes a confident first step into drama with this gritty character study, which is a little earnest and heavy-handed, but stirring and poetic too. At its best, Harka recalls the flinty classics of Italian neorealism in its unflinching depiction of social issues and financial hardship, highlighting the devastating slow-burn emotional damage they inflict.
Nathan initially planned to make a dramatised biopic of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor whose fatal self-immolation in December 2010 is widely credited as the initial spark for the wave of “Arab Spring” conflagrations that followed. As the project evolved, the director updated and fictionalised his lead character into a more contemporary everyman figure. Even so, he has retained some quasi-documentary methods, working with a mostly non-professional cast, shooting in key locations where the uprising erupted, and incorporating footage of real street protests into the film. An international co-production written and directed by an American, Harka is wide open to critique as a “western gaze” take on the Arab world. But it is a finely crafted work with universal resonance, and healthy art-house potential beyond its prize-winning festival run.
His handsome, impassive face etched with soulful intensity and repressed rage, Bessa is quietly magnetic as Ali, the anti-hero of Harka. A decade after the revolutionary promise of the Arab Spring has failed to deliver substantial change, Ali is scraping an austere existence by selling black market petrol on the street, openly bribing the police to turn a blind eye. Disgusted with the inescapable corruption and harsh financial struggle of his homeland, Ali dreams of illegally buying his way to a new life in Europe, lured by exaggerated claims of lucrative work and lavish lifestyles that he hears from boastful friends who have lived abroad.
But following the death of his estranged father, Ali is forced to postpone his emigration plans. When his older brother Skander (Khaled Brahem) takes a menial service job in a far-away tourist resort, Ali reluctantly takes over as caretaker to his younger sisters, adult Sarra (Iqbal Harbi) and pre-teen Alyssa (Salima Maatoug). Initially remote, then increasingly tender, the prodigal son’s bond with his youngest sibling becomes the film’s emotional engine. Alyssa’s intermittent voiceover also serves as a background narrative commentary, elevating Ali into a folk hero with allegorical musings and wise insights smarter than her years. Nathan is deploying poetic licence here, but this device is effective, lending a lyrical tone to otherwise relentlessly bleak material.
The financial pressures on Ali only deepen after his father’s death, as banks and bailiffs threaten to seize the family home over outstanding debts. He tries to fix the problem through legal channels, but is ignored by petty government bureaucrats and shunned by potential employers. Ali is then forced to resort to desperate measures, notably a risky sideline smuggling petrol across the border to Libya. These nerve-jangling, high-speed forays into the desert push Harka into tense thriller terrain.
Ultimately, Ali’s boiling rage against a rotten system drives him to take extreme action: “there is so much injustice, I’m losing my mind” he howls, but his protests fall on deaf ears. Bessa’s body language takes on a new register here, a kind of eerie calm suggesting Ali has surrendered to hopeless nihilism. A final act of violence, somewhat clumsily foreshadowed by the screenplay, is all the more effective for the nonchalant non-reaction it provokes. Nathan seems to be suggesting that Tunisia is now so numb to such horrors, they barely register on the brutalised national psyche. Punctuated by flashes of visual poetry, Harka is a commendably heartfelt film full of powerful emotions and strong performances, even if it sometimes crosses the line from drama to melodrama. Eli Keszler’s over-emphatic score, crashing and rumbling, lends itself more to the latter.
Director, screenwriter: Lotfy Nathan
Cast: Adam Bessa, Najib Allagui, Ikbal Harbi, Salima Maatoug, Khaled Brahem
Producers: Julie Viez, Alex Hughes, Lotfy Nathan, Riccardo Maddalosso, Eugene Kotlyarenko, Nicole Romano, Tariq Merhab, Maurice Fadida
Cinematography: Maximilian Pittner
Editing: Sophie Corra, Thomas Ni
Music: Eli Keszler
Production companies: Cinenovo (France), Kodiak Pictures (US), Beachside (US), Anonymous Content (US)
World sales: Film Constellation
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard)
In Arabic
90 minutes
