Who Do I Belong To, the assured feature film debut from Tunisian-American director Meryam Joobeur, weaves a mystical and mysterious tale of atonement and familial love. An expansion of the director’s Oscar-nominated short film Brotherhood, Joobeur once again seeks to create an intimate and emotional portrait of a family bearing the consequences of their sons fleeing their Tunisian home to join the fight for the Islamic State.
Aïcha and Brahim, parents of three sons, live a seemingly idyllic life on their farm in the strikingly beautiful landscape of northern Tunisia. Clearly loving and devoted to each other, the family is haunted by the absence of the eldest sons – Mehdi and Amine – who have left their small town to join the jihadist fight in Syria and face arrest if they attempt to return. Their absence marks each family member in different ways. Aïcha and Brahim lie to their youngest, Adam, telling him his older brothers have found work in Italy. Adam, desperately missing them, clings to family friend Bilal, the local police constable.
From its first moments, the film deftly establishes an underlying sense of menace, gripping the audience with its powerful sound design before ever showing us a single image. We quickly understand that not all is as it seems, and that the line between reality and illusion is blurry. Aïcha, we learn, has prophetic dreams and reads coffee grounds for her neighbours. We journey with her as she attempts to unravel the mysteries of an increasingly surreal dreamscape peppered with wild horses and unsettling visions, and feel every bit of her fleeting joy, pain, and confusion thanks to the superlative work of lead actress Salha Nasraoui. When Mehdi suddenly appears to her in the fields with a mysterious woman in a purple niqab, it is unclear if he is really there, or simply another of her visions.
Of course, Mehdi has in fact returned, with his pregnant wife Reem in tow. We learn that Amine has died in Syria, but Mehdi is hesitant to share the details. Aïcha, overcome with grief, does everything in her power to welcome and protect the pair even as Reem proves increasingly unsettling to Brahim and Adam. The more we learn about Mehdi’s new bride, the more mysterious she becomes. She is not Muslim, though she never seems to remove her niqab, and nearly never speaks. Her chipped pink nail polish and her striking purple rimmed blue eyes belie a different kind of life. One gets the sense that she’s suffered a great trauma, and that both her silence and her veil serve as some kind of shield. Reem and Mehdi cling to each other desperately at nearly every moment.
The townspeople, ignorant of Mehdi’s return, grow increasingly frightened as local men start to disappear mysteriously without explanation. Aïcha and Bilal continue to protect the newlyweds even as it becomes apparent that Reem seems to be involved somehow. As the film progresses, it becomes more and more dreamlike, and we are never quite sure if what we see is reality or illusion, the audience drawn further and further into the spectral mystery at the centre of the story. Is Reem a siren? A spectre? A saviour? What is her purpose? When Mehdi and Reem’s secrets are finally revealed in the last chapter of the film, we are provided some answers, but even more unanswered questions.
Joobeur has crafted a complex and nuanced tale of loyalty, belonging, and atonement with remarkable sensitivity and grace. Grounded in the theme of enduring familial love, she keeps a keen eye on the small rituals of its expression: the preparation of a home cooked meal, the tender trimming of a beard, hands gently reaching for each other in the darkness. As the film concludes we see that a wound to Aïcha’s hand suffered early on in the story has never healed, and we sense that the wounds in her heart will never quite heal either. As the picture fades away, the film closes with the sounds of birds and laughter, hopeful for brighter days to come.
Who Do I Belong To premieres in competition at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival.
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