Fatima

Fatima was born in Algeria and lives in France. She works in cleaning; she does shifts at two different places and her life passes on staircases. She has two daughters. Nesrine is studying medicine and does not expect her mother to understand it. Souad is fifteen; she causes trouble at school and fights with her mother every day. Fatima does not speak French well. There is a problem of language between her and her daughters; she cannot say what she wants to say. One day she falls on a staircase and is signed off work. During the time at home she starts writing. Philippe Faucon directs. Soria Zeroual plays Fatima and Zita Hanrot plays Nesrine; Kenza Noah Aïche is in the cast. It is a French production. The source is the writing of Fatima Elayoubi; she worked as a cleaner in France and the notebooks she wrote in Arabic were published later. Soria Zeroual is not a professional actor. The film won best film at the Césars; Zita Hanrot was named most promising actress. The matter it treats is language; Fatima thinks in her own and nobody at home reads it. It runs short and the narrative never enlarges; the events stay at an everyday scale. The narrative does not judge the daughters either; both sides are given their reasons. Its limit is scale; there is little event, the pace low and no dramatic peak. Who it is for: viewers who like French social drama and immigrant narratives. Who it is not for: it is small in scale, slow, and the ending quiet.