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Across cultures

In his story titled ‘Pantanella: A Song along the Road,’ featured in the collection ‘Mediterranean Crossroads: Migration Literature in Italy,’ Mohsen Melliti makes a character “continue the fight, in order to live like human beings.” That, in a way, captures the spirit of his debut feature film ‘Io, l’altro’ (Me, the Other).

The Tunisian-born writer-filmmaker’s film is being screened by Cochin Film Society at the photonics department auditorium on the Cusat campus on Friday.

The film, which is at the crust a reaction of the post-September 11 paranoia, is more about interpersonal relations and camaraderie.

The film has Tunisian immigrant Youssef arriving in Sicily to take a job on the same fishing boat as local boy Giuseppe, where the two strike-up a friendship.

Their lives are shaken when two airplanes crash into the twin towers in New York and later, by the news of the 2004 Madrid bombing. The situation is compounded when Giuseppe, while out in the sea fishing, hears on the radio that a search has been launched for a terrorist named Youssef.

The calm, open sea that was their gateway to freedom suddenly becomes claustrophobic like a prison.

Born in Tunis (Tunisia), Melliti moved to Rome where he finished his studies.

The film ‘Me, the Other’ won the Golden Globe in 2007 for best Opera Prima and the Magna Graecia 2007 prize for best first film.

Anand Haridas

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