La Saison des hommes (The Season of Men)

The gulf between men and women in Tunisia - political, psychological, and physical - is explored in this downbeat drama from director Moufida Tlatli. On the island of Djerba, most of the men spend 11 months of the year away from home in Tunis, where they work and send money home to support the wives and children they leave behind. Aïcha has told her husband Saïd that she wants to live with him in Tunis. However, they have two teenage daughters, Meriem and Emma, and he will allow Aïcha to join him only on the condition that she bears him a son. Aïcha weaves rugs in her spare time to help pay for her passage to Tunis, while she and her friends fend off the depression and desperate loneliness of their marriages. Meanwhile, Meriem, who is newly married, is dealing with her anxieties about sex, while her sister Emma is having an affair with one of the few married men on the island. (Mark Deming)