Cineuropa chatted with Tunisian auteur Mehdi Hmili, whose new film Exile [+lire aussi :
critique
interview : Mehdi Hmili
fiche film] had its world premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival and now celebrates its MENA premiere at the 46th Cairo Film Festival, in the International Competition. The film is set in a steel factory, where a tragic accident claims the life of one of its workers. His closest friend sets out on a mission to find and punish the people responsible. Hmili breaks down his intentions, explains how he tackled the visual approach and reflects on how Exile comments on the weakening results of the Arab Spring revolution in Tunisia.

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Cineuropa: Exile was originally planned as a documentary. Why did you decide to turn it into a fiction, and what was that transformation process like?
Mehdi Hmili: For years, I’d wanted to film this steel factory – once a national symbol, now on the verge of collapse. The project began as a documentary, but it fell apart for political and human reasons, including the imprisonment of the person who was meant to be its central figure. At that point, fiction became not only an alternative, but a necessity.

Cinema is a language: whether it takes a documentary or fiction form is secondary. What matters is the inner truth of the movie. The shift happened organically. Before writing anything, I drew, scribbled and listened to experimental music. The film was born from a pain I carried around – mental, physical and spiritual. Mohamed’s journey mirrors that process: a slow mutation, a drift, a combustion. I’ve always been drawn to broken men and to the moral ambiguity of film noir. Exile lies precisely in that shadow.

Visually, the film is stunning – its beauty stands in stark contrast to the darker reality it portrays. Could you elaborate on this contrast and your visual approach with the DoP?
With Farouk Laaridh, the cinematographer, we developed the film’s visual identity early on. Farouk works like a painter: he composes moving canvases. Every shot was designed, discussed and rehearsed – even the ones that seem spontaneous.

The factory both fascinated and intimidated us. We wanted to avoid easy beauty, the seductive aesthetic of decay. So, we questioned every image: its purpose, its rhythm, its dramatic weight. Fire, shadow, deep blacks – none of it is decorative. Chiaroscuro becomes a character in its own right, reflecting the collapse of this world.

You blend multiple genres, including body horror and film noir. Why did you choose this mix? As a cinephile, what does referencing film history mean to you?
Exile is a hybrid. It begins like a documentary, shifts into noir and eventually descends into a form of mystical body horror. This mix came instinctively. Here, I am closer to pure cinema than to the “issue-driven film” – a category that often stifles Arab filmmakers, who are expected to deliver sociopolitical commentary, rather than cinematic vision.

It is my most intimate film, one that leaves me feeling exposed. I put my violence, my obsessions and my fragility into it. I wanted to film broken men and fractured lives. References emerged naturally – traces of Travis from Paris, Texas, and echoes of David Cronenberg, Akira Kurosawa and Raymond Depardon. But I never set out to quote anyone.

Strangely, I was thinking more of Rembrandt than of filmmakers. Cinema saved me from the street, from violence and from despair. I owe it everything. I only hope to honour that history while keeping a place for ambiguity and loss of control.

A man burns in one of the key scenes, evoking Mohamed Bouazizi’s act of protest that sparked the Arab Spring. Would you say this is a commentary on how the ideals of the revolution were lost, and how little has changed for the working class?
In Thala Mon Amour [2014], Ghanem Zrelli already played a character named Mohamed – a nihilistic man who did not believe in the revolution. I’m obsessed with the question of what people decide at those key moments when their lives intersect with History with a capital H.

Ten years later, Exile revisits those ghosts. Mohamed Bouazizi remains a powerful symbol, even though his act wasn’t meant to spark a revolution that ultimately collapsed. The Mohamed in Exile is like an alternative Bouazizi – someone who channels revolt not through sacrifice, but through madness and violence. The Nietzsche quote at the beginning introduces the film’s core question: how do injustice, corruption and social violence transform those who endure them? Into monsters? Into living fires?

The conclusion is a bitter one. The Arab Spring failed, and with it our dreams of freedom and social justice. Like the factory, like Mohamed, everything eventually collapses – heavily and silently.