Satin Rouge

After her husband’s death, Lilia’s life turns entirely around her daughter Salma. Looking for Salma late one night, she walks into a dance cabaret. The atmosphere of the place unsettles her at first, but she finds herself going back again and again. She becomes friends with one of the dancers and in time goes up to dance herself. At the same time a relationship begins with one of the musicians at the club. There is something neither of them knows: the same man is also seeing Salma. The film tells a woman’s relation to her own desire without handing down a moral. The tension between motherhood and a life of one’s own is the real subject. Hiam Abbass takes the lead, with Hend El Fahem also in the cast. Raja Amari’s hundred minute film, a joint French and Tunisian production, was completed in 2002.