Red Path

Original title: Les enfants rouges
Genre: Drama
Director: Lotfi Achour
Country: Tunisia, France, Belgium, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Qatar
Year of production: 2024
Czas: 97 min

Awards and nominations:
2024 Festival International du Film Francophone de Namur: Best Film, Best Cinematography – Wojciech Staroń
2024 Vancouver International Film Festival: Audience Award
2024 Saint-Jean-de-Luz International Film Festival: Best Director – Lofti Achour, Audience Award

This story is loosely based on real events. 13-year-old Ashraf (Ali Helani) and his cousin Nizar (Yassine Samouni) accidently enter the land controlled by terrorists. The Jihadists take the boys for spies. They chop Nizar’s head off and tell Ashraf to take it to his cousin’s family. It’s supposed to serve as a warning not to go against the Islamic extremists hidden in Tunisian mountains.
Lotfi Achour’s film isn’t only a tale about terrorism but also a universal and moving story of a teenage boy who suddenly needs to become a man. Carrying his cousin’s head in a bag, Ashraf must accept the trauma and fight his own demons which represent fears of every Middle Eastern nation oppressed by Islamic radicalism.
“Red Path” reminds us that the Jihadist terrorism touches not only Western societies, but first it destroys Arab countries. Achour’s film doesn’t shy away from poetic shots, thoughtfully composed by a Polish cinematographer Wojciech Staroń. Brutal realism clashes with the perspective of the 13-year-old boy who fights to keep his childhood innocence until the end. Is it possible to do that, though, when innocence is the first victim of war?

Author: Łukasz Adamski

Director:
Lotfi Achour – a director and screenwriter. He studied directing in Paris. His short film, “La Laine sur le Dos” (2016), was presented in the official selection in Cannes and was nominated for a César Award. “Burning Hope” (2017), his feature directorial debut taking place during the Jasmin Revolution, premiered at the Dubai festival and showed disillusionment with social changes in Tunisia. Achour consequently explores the questions of identity, freedom, and social inequalities, combining realism with poetry. He’s also a keen film educator in Tunisia.

   subtitles in Polish and English