On a hot summer morning, a crew of workers arrive at a fig orchard in northwest Tunisia. Through sun-drenched leaves, the youngest of the women steal precious moments of respite away from the foreman’s watchful gaze. Meanwhile, the elders, tasked with the careful job of packing the tender fruit, watch them and reminisce. They joke, argue, gossip and flirt, all the while painting an unhurried but riveting portrait of everyday life, in which class and circumstance do not allow for personal freedoms but where sisterhood serves as a transformative act of resistance.
Set over the course of a single day, and with a cast made up of an intergenerational ensemble of non-professional actors, Under the Fig Trees, an Official Selection of Venice, the Cannes Director’s Fortnight and the Toronto International Film Festival, is “an elegant, understated tapestry of complex interactions [and] a pleasurable and immersive experience” (The Hollywood Reporter) that ultimately reveals the ways in which sisterhood itself becomes an act of resistance.
Click here to watch the trailer.
Under the Fig Trees arrives on DVD on 2/13/24.
