Writers: Anna Ciennik, Malika Cécile Louati and Erige Sehiri
Director: Erige Sehiri
So much is unsaid and unexplained in Erige Sehiri’s examination of immigrant life in Tunisia. Promised Sky’s opening scene is of a toddler being bathed by a group of women. They are gentle and loving to the young Kenza, who is unsure of her own age. Slowly and heartbreakingly, we discover she is a survivor from a boat carrying refugees that sank on the coast. Kenza tells the story as if her experience was a great adventure: a man carrying knives is mentioned as well as the boat’s capsizing, but the women are unable to piece together the whole story or find out who she was travelling with.
The women are from the Ivory Coast, come to Tunisia for a better life. Marie is a preacher of an evangelical church which meets in the building every Sunday. She looks after her parishioners, giving the poorer ones money or nappies, as well as caring for women who have nowhere else to go. But Tunisia in 2024 is not as safe as it used to be. Immigrants are being rounded up by the police, and sub-Saharan Africans are being hassled on the streets.
Jolie is in Tunisia on a student visa. She’d rather be in university accommodation, but her father, back in the Ivory Coast, insists, for her own safety, that she lives with Marie. He sends money to Marie for his daughter’s board; money that Jolie never sees. The other housemate is the indomitable Naney, who, as she hasn’t got her legal documents yet, ekes out a living dealing in illegal alcohol with her friend Foued. She promises her daughter back in the Ivory Coast that soon she’ll have enough money to bring her to Tunisia. The daughter suggests that her mother has promised this before. It’s been three years since they last saw each other.
Remarkably, there are few back stories here. The audience is left to piece together the histories of these women, very much like how they try to find someone who might recognise Kenza, whom they decide, for now, to look after. Instead of charting their journeys and reasons to come to Tunisia, director Sehiri reveals how they live their lives now and how they deal with an increasing fear of migrants. One video they watch on their phones suggests that those from the Ivory Coast eat cats, a sure way to inflame racial hatred.
As Marie, Aïssa Maïga gives a terrifyingly good performance as a woman who thinks that she is always right. She preaches about compassion, but appears to lack the virtue herself. However, Sehiri is not criticising her Christianity in general; the church’s joyful services are highlights in this multifaceted film where people are shown in all their complexities of good and bad, of hope and despair.
But it is Debora Lobey Naney’s role as Naney which gives this film its heart. Wheeling and dealing her way through the unnamed city, Naney is a force of nature as she sells her contraband to other Sub-Saharan Africans. Her friendship with Foued is delightful, more so as we are never told if they have a sexual relationship. Their odd liaisons, always getting up to mischief, provide a sense of freedom for Naney, even as these ways to make money are executed in order to bring that freedom.
And the camera’s distance – it never judges these women – is retained until the final frame, and we can argue whether Marie does the right thing or not, but we, like the camera, shouldn’t judge either. Sehiri’s previous work in documentary is utilised in the way most of the dialogue is workshopped rather than scripted, bringing a sense of cinéma-vérité to Promised Sky. Estelle Kenza Dpgbo’s performance as Kenza is a beacon of light in a dark world.
Promised Sky is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2025 from 8 – 19 October.
