Brotherhood
2018 · 25m · Tunisia / Canada / Qatar / Sweden
Directed by Meryam Joobeur
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tense
A hardened Tunisian shepherd is deeply unsettled when his eldest son Malek returns home after a long absence fighting for ISIS in Syria, accompanied by a mysterious, veiled new wife. As suspicion and buried tenderness collide, the father is driven toward a fateful decision that fractures the family.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects a morality play about radicalization, but Joobeur refuses the sermon—she just lets three brothers breathe the same air and watches what happens. It's formally restrained in a way that feels almost defiant.
The casting of the Mechergui brothers creates an almost documentary texture that paradoxically deepens the film's formal control; Joobeur's measured pacing and the weight she gives to silence over dialogue situate this firmly in the Dardenne lineage of Tunisian social realism with genuine artistic ambition.
Casting non-professionals with actual sibling chemistry instead of trained actors playing brothers—that one decision dissolves the artifice and lets the family's buried tenderness read as lived experience rather than performance.
Reviews
Beautifully shot, with moments of pure poetry woven in amid its admirably restrained performances.
Visually beautiful and emotionally complex.
Festivals
- Toronto International Film Festival 2018, Best Canadian Short Film
- Carthage Film Festival 2018, Tanit d'Or (Best Short Film)
- Academy Awards 2020, Nominee