13/08/2025 - Mehdi Hmili's film is an ambient, slow-burning vengeance flick that becomes, inadvertently perhaps, a comment on a masculinity crisis

Stylish and beautifully shot in shades of sepia with a hint of rusty orange, Exile is the second entry by Tunisian auteur Mehdi Hmili in Locarno’s programme. His previous film, Streams [+see also:
trailer
interview: Mehdi Hmili
film profile], debuted in 2021 in the Filmmakers of the Present section and was both an ode to unyielding motherly love and a portrait of troubled youth in urban Tunisia. In Exile, Hmili switches tone, style, and setting, stretching his directorial skills and paying homage to his evident cinephilia. An emotionally engaging slow burn—or, given that it starts off in a steel factory, a slow melt—, Exile begins with atmospheric shots of an industrial and rural landscape, and is layered with elements of body horror, film noir, and the revenge film, yet maintains its initial slow rhythm and carefully curated colour palette. Beyond offering some aesthetic pleasure, however, the film evokes feelings of melancholy, sadness turning into anger, and even some visceral disgust. 

The setting is uber-masculine—a slightly outdated factory employing an all-male crew who work hard and party harder in the barracks, where the smell of sweat and disillusionment is tangible. Even an explosion that claims the life of one of the workers, Adel, and causes Mohamed (Ghanem Zrelli) a serious injury—a piece of metal lodged in his body—doesn't truly shake this world. After a quickly wrapped investigation that blames Adel for the accident, it is business as usual for all but Mohamed, who refuses to believe that his closest friend made a fatal mistake. As he pursues his own investigation, eventually joined by his friend’s widow (Maram Ben Aziza), Mohamed's body slowly becomes infected and disfigured by rust, and he grows more obsessed with vengeance, becoming increasingly brutal, as if this physical decay were consuming not only his body but also his mind and heart.

This decay and the genre shift—the protagonist turning into a noir-style detective with a femme fatale at his side—work aptly as a metaphor for a masculinity in crisis. The roles traditionally attributed to men—worker, detective, avenger, boss—are compromised and ought to be tossed into the dustbin of history along with the rust overtaking Mohamed’s body. Hmili reserves the final piece of the puzzle, an element that further reinforces this reading of masculinity crisis, for the very end of the film.

This interpretation is further underscored by a disappointingly one-dimensional portrayal of female characters as mere ornaments, bodies to be used by or dependent on male figures. While such characterisation aligns with genre conventions, the film misses the opportunity to bend and rewrite these rules. Additionally, the depiction of antagonists and the final confrontation bring a slight awkwardness, as if—to keep with the steel factory metaphor—the temperature of the genre’s melting process was simply too low, leaving rough edges sticking out from an otherwise meticulous and aesthetically alluring structure.

Hmili, with the commendable efforts of his crew—chiefly DoP Farouk Laaridh, sound designer Ismail Abdelghafar, and music composer Amélie Legrand—has created an audiovisual ballad into a world that is stale and obsolete. Yet it feels as if the director himself is unsure whether he wants to stretch his arm to wave goodbye to this world, or to grasp it before it falls into the abyss.

Exile is a co-production between Tunisia, Luxembourg, France, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. The producers are Yol Film House, Tarantula Luxembourg, and Volte Film, while the Doha Film Institute and the Red Sea Film Festival Foundation hold co-producer credits.