Introduction

Raja Amari was born into a middle-class family in Tunis (her father was a civil servant and her mother designed children's clothes) in 1971. She studied French literature and civilisation at the University of Tunis I, before going on to study film at FEMIS in Paris, from which she graduated in 1998. She currently divides her time between Paris and Tunis. Before making her first feature, she worked as a film critic for various Tunisian film reviews, contributing, for example, articles to the early issues of Cinécrits on filmmakers as diverse as Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Raymond Depardon and Michel Khleifi, and on subjects ranging from the depiction of space in Tunisian films to the amateur film movement. Her stated preference (when asked in 2004) was for Italian and French filmmakers, Pier Paolo Pasolini having been an early influence. She added that she felt very close to the new French cinema, to young French filmmakers like François Ozon and Arnaud Despleschin: ‘It's not that they come out of the same school as me, FEMIS, it's more that I like the way they deal with their characters.