Silences of the palace = Les Silences du palais

This atmospheric first feature film from Tunisian director Mufida Tlatli is the story of Alia, the daughter of a beautiful servant in the palace of the last kings of Tunisia. Memories of her childhood, some pleasant, some painful, are brought to the surface when she returns to the crumbling palace that was both her home and her prison after the death of its patriarch - Sid’Ali. A sensitive, lucid portrayal of growing up in a world where women were not only in the palace to serve but were also to submit to the prince’s “rights of the bedchamber”, with luminous performances from Hend Sabri, as the young Alia, and Amel Hedhili as her overly vigilant mother, Khedija. In Arabic with English subtitles.