As I Open My Eyes

As I Open My Eyes (À peine j'ouvre les yeux, 2015) is a Tunisian-French-Belgian drama you can watch online on iFILM — the debut feature from director Leyla Bouzid, shot on location in Tunis.

The story unfolds in the summer of 2010, months before the country's revolution. Farah is eighteen and newly graduated, already being steered toward medical school by a family that means well. She's pointed somewhere else entirely: a rock band with protest songs, nights in the city, a first relationship. Her mother Hayet watches from a careful distance, reading the dangers that Farah doesn't see yet. Baya Medhaffer plays Farah with the kind of physical presence that holds every scene; Ghalia Ben Ali as the mother is measured and devastating in equal measure.

Bouzid set out to make a coming-of-age film and ended up with something larger — a portrait of a society on the edge, and a young woman who mistakes the calm before the storm for permanent freedom. Watch As I Open My Eyes online on iFILM.