Har­ka

Few recent exam­ples of open­ing nar­ra­tion have laid out so fore­bod­ing a mis­sion state­ment for the film that fol­lows as that which starts Tunisian dra­ma Har­ka. Over var­i­ous estab­lish­ing shots, a young woman’s voice tells a tale passed on to her by her broth­er. Way out in the desert, a lake appar­ent­ly appeared out of nowhere one morn­ing. Pro­duc­ing crys­tal clear water, its seem­ing­ly per­fect qual­i­ties attract­ed vis­i­tors from far away just to see or swim in it. No one ques­tioned the appar­ent mir­a­cle, as the locals, we’re told, believe in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of magic.

The stage is set for a sto­ry with a pos­si­ble bent of mag­i­cal real­ism. But the nar­ra­tor quick­ly dis­pels that notion. Months on from the mir­a­cle spot’s begin­nings as a tourist attrac­tion, some­one learned it was in fact a sink­hole filled up with run-off from a near­by phos­phate mine. Despite this rev­e­la­tion, peo­ple still came; still swam. But then the water turned black, final­ly mak­ing peo­ple under­stand the full extent to which they were wal­low­ing in poi­son. Cut to open­ing credits.

One way to inter­pret this short sto­ry is as an encap­su­la­tion of refus­ing to let go of faith in the out­ward­ly pos­i­tive mirage of change, even when learn­ing of neg­a­tive under­pin­nings. Anoth­er is as an exam­ple of how peo­ple can refuse to prop­er­ly acknowl­edge a rot in their soci­ety until an absolute worst-case sce­nario is star­ing them right in the face.

Both seem applic­a­ble to the wider nar­ra­tive of Har­ka, which explic­it­ly takes place a decade on from the Arab Spring. It grap­ples with a generation’s frus­tra­tion at its failed promise, while also draw­ing sev­er­al par­al­lels with the fate of Mohamed Bouaz­izi. In Decem­ber 2010, his self-immo­la­tion, in response to the con­fis­ca­tion of his wares and harass­ment from author­i­ties, became one of the cat­a­lysts for the Tunisian Rev­o­lu­tion and wider Arab Spring.

Har­ka chron­i­cles what sort of burn­ing despair might dri­ve some­one to become a burn­ing mar­tyr, with a blend of claus­tro­pho­bic char­ac­ter study and sociopo­lit­i­cal thriller – Eli Keszler’s thrash­ing per­cus­sive score helps con­sid­er­ably with the lat­ter. At the cen­tre is a remark­able pow­der-keg per­for­mance from Adam Bessa as Ali, a young man who bare­ly makes a liv­ing sell­ing con­tra­band petrol on street cor­ners, spend­ing his nights in an aban­doned build­ing site.

Sav­ing cash to move to Europe, he’s forced to aban­don his plans when his father dies and his young sis­ters back home need a guardian. And with the gain­ing of the patriarch’s respon­si­bil­i­ties also comes the pass­ing on of his var­i­ous debts. All of Ali’s attempts at pro­gres­sion, both legit­i­mate and increas­ing­ly crim­i­nal, are imped­ed at every turn. Vir­tu­al­ly no per­son of high­er social sta­tus seems unwill­ing to rob a man at his low­est; be it of the min­i­mal coins in his pock­et or the last traces of his hope.

Writer-direc­tor Lot­fy Nathan’s both elec­tri­fy­ing and tru­ly sad fic­tion fea­ture debut is quite clear­ly nev­er lead­ing to a hap­py res­o­lu­tion. But the right­ful rage of its com­men­tary is artic­u­lat­ed with such clar­i­ty and speci­fici­ty that it cir­cum­vents any accu­sa­tions of ​‘mis­ery porn’.