The youngest of three sisters in a conservative Franco-Arab household, Fatima is absorbed in her studies and resisting the family pressure to be married off like her siblings. But the pull to explore sensual realms grows stronger by the day, exacerbated by the ever-growing disdain she feels for her secret gentleman caller who’s already planning their future. As the realization kicks in, she decides to pursue her attraction to women with abandon, opening herself up to a wide array of romantic highs and lows.
Hafsia Herzi (A Bag of Four, The Rapture) returns to VIFF with yet another emotionally astute drama featuring a notably sharp turn by Nadia Melliti, which earned her the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Herzi’s skill for drawing out quietly intense, naturalistic performances truly shines in this beautifully lensed, layered character study where the weight of cultural identity inevitably pushes the envelope of relationship paradigms.
Best Actress (Nadia Melliti), Cannes 2025
Nadia Melliti, Ji-Min Park
France/Germany
2025
In French and Arabic with English subtitles
At International Village
At Fifth Avenue
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Producer
Julie Billy, Naomi Denamur, Vanessa Ciszewski
Screenwriter
Hafsia Herzi
Cinematography
Jérémie Attard
Editor
Géraldine Mangenot
Production Design
Diéné Berete
Original Music
Amine Bouhafa
Hafsia Herzi
Filmography: You Deserve a Lover (2019); Good Mother (2021)
Photo by Chloe Carbonel
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Company of Strangers
In this Canadian gem, seven elderly women find themselves stranded when their bus breaks down in the wilderness. With only their wits, memories and some roasted frogs' legs to sustain them, this remarkable group of strangers share their life stories.
GoodFellas
The ultimate crash and burn movie, Scorsese's exhilarating gangster film is infused with the excitement of fast cash, girls, guns and drugs. Yet this brazenly amoral movie also captures the brutality, betrayal, and spiritual void of the criminal world.
Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Tarantino announced himself to the world with this ingeniously fractured heist movie, carved into character-centric chapters, riffing breezily on pop culture, but counterpointing all this with blood-soaked intensity.
Madonna: Truth or Dare
A year in the life of Madonna at the height of her fame, touring Blonde Ambition through 1990. There's concert footage, but the movie is also daringly truthful about life behind the scenes — not that Madonna is every really off-stage.
