Cinefile

In this month’s Cinefile, Rosslyn Hyams' guests have both made films about feisty women characters. Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania's feature film Beauty and the Dogs, is about a rape case that became a national scandal in Tunisia. Meanwhile, the documentary Laetitia, by French director Julie Talon, follows a Women's Thai-Boxing champion. REVIEWThe bright colour scheme in Kaouther Ben Hania's feature cloaks a dark story, but one that in real-life had a happy ending. "The former president apologised to the young woman and the family... the guilty policemen were sent to jail," recounts the young director who is currently working on a project revolving around the refugee/migrant issues.The camera follows, and chases after, budding actress Mariam Ferjani in her states of disarray, despair and despondency, quickening and freezing the pace in a sequence of single-take shots from one enclosed space to another corridor. Ben Hania conjures a realistic nightmare sensation as the character Mariam, raped by police,

RFI's Rosslyn Hyams presents Cinefile. This month her special guest is director Raoul Peck whose latest film after the documentary on James Baldwin called I am not your negro is a militant feature film, The Young Karl Marx. Cinefile's September Film of the Month is Philippe van Leeuw's, war-thriller called In Syria (Une famille syrienne).  REVIEWIn Syria, also known as Insyriated and In Syria, is economical film shot in an apartment with only a few cautious peeks into a staircase and onto a small courtyard.The family in the well-kept apartment is isolated. Not a film for sufferers of claustrophobia, it is effective in emotional impact, buoyed by intense sound.Apart from the standard helicopter buzz, gunfire and mortar explosions inherent in most films about war, the characters are also seen listening intently to marauders moving ominously in the almost-empty building.The family is headed by an elderly man, a father-in-law, played by Mohsen Abbas who director Philippe Van Leeuw says he imagined as being "an en