Synopsis
A Tale of Love and Desire (Une histoire d'amour et de désir, 2021) is a French-Tunisian drama directed by Leyla Bouzid — watch online on iFILM. Ahmed, 18, grew up in the Paris suburbs in an Algerian family, and his first semester at university sits him next to Farah, a Tunisian student barely a week out of Tunis.
Stumbling onto a body of Arabic erotic poetry he never knew existed shakes something loose in Ahmed. The texts feel both alien and intimate — written in the language of his ancestors, about experiences his upbringing taught him to deny. Farah is confident and unguarded in ways he is not, and the gap between them is the whole tension of the film.
Bouzid tells this quietly, without melodrama or judgment. Sami Outalbali and Zbeida Belhajamor carry a charge between them that makes the restraint feel earned rather than timid — a rare film about Arab desire that doesn't reduce it to a problem. Stream A Tale of Love and Desire (2021) on iFILM.
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