A low cloud of misery and horror settles on this sombre movie from Tunisian writer-director Lotfi Achour, inspired by a brutal event in his country from 2015. A teenage shepherd called Mabrouk Soltani was murdered and beheaded on Mount Mghila in central Tunisia by members of Jund al-Khilafah (“soldiers of the caliphate”), the Tunisian branch of Islamic State, which habitually hides out in that remote, rugged region. They videoed their grotesque homicide, claiming the boy was an army spy and ordered his terrified 14-year-old cousin, who was with him, to carry the severed head back to his village as a brutal “message” – and this boy obeyed, in a stricken state of trauma that can only be guessed at. This horrifying event was to assume the status of national scandal in Tunisia two years later when the victim’s elder brother was also murdered by IS in the same place and on the same pretext. (Four jihadis were convicted in 2019 and another 45 in absentia.)
Achour’s film centres on the first event, while anticipating the second. Achraf (Ali Helali) goes up the mountain with his older cousin Nizar (Yassine Samouni), who brings his goats there because it is the only place with water for the herd to drink – and because it is beautiful. The nightmarish attack ensues and the village goes into deep shock; the head is kept in a refrigerator and despite the obvious danger of another attack, Nizar’s brother grimly resolves to lead a party of volunteers, including Achraf, back up into the mountain to recover the rest of the body so Nizar can be given a proper burial. All the while the heartless and prurient press gather at his home.
The tone seems to be balanced between tragic and macabre, and at first it seems as if Achraf will carry the head in the bag back into his community and, in a state of profound shock, might even go into a state of denial about what has happened. That isn’t the case – or not exactly. Once the awful truth is disclosed, he has to talk to the girl with whom poor Nizar was hopelessly and unrequitedly in love, and this trauma brings her together with Achraf. He also has hallucinatory encounters and conversations with Nizar, which I think don’t entirely work and bring the film close to a kind of emollient fantasy dimension. However the movie is well acted, and honestly attempts to encompass the unbearable grief suffered by the family, although the bizarre element of mystery and the hateful political malice of IS, particularly with the second murder, can’t really be represented.
