Nouri Bouzid’s 2006 film Making Of took home two awards from the Tribeca Film Festival; one for Best Actor, and the other a special mention for Best Screenplay. Though the winning performance by young Lofti Abdelli as Bahta, the carefree-kid-turned-dazed-terrorist is doubtlessly noteworthy, it’s Bouzid’s nuanced script that goes the furthest to give this Tunisian film its undeniable impact. Opening with a group of lively and typical teenage boys — talking trash, flirting with delinquency via graffiti — it’s hard to imagine that Making Of will devolve into a harrowing look at the mind of a young man who will soon strap sticks of dynamite to his chest. Yet, as beautifully as Bouzid and cinematographer Michel Baudour present the landscape of seaside Tunis, they paint in equally vivid strokes the hardscrabble poverty that affects so many families in the north Africa. As Bahta’s run-ins with the law escalate in intensity, his relationship with his father disintegrates and his options dwindle (the kid just wants to be a break dancer, which isn’t an admired, or particularly lucrative, occupation in Tunisia), it still seems extraordinarily unlikely that he’s destined to become a deluded pawn in an extremist game. But Bouzid delicately and empathetically puts him there in a way that’s as emotionally deflating for the viewer as it is haunting.
Jason Ferguson: The Archives 