I hardly open my eyes
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | I hardly open my eyes |
| Original title | À peine j'ouvre les yeux |
| Country of production |
France , Tunisia , Belgium , United Arab Emirates |
| original language |
Arabic , French |
| Publishing year | 2015 |
| length | 106 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Leyla Bouzid |
| script |
Leyla Bouzid , Marie-Sophie Chambon |
| production |
Sandra da Fonseca , Imed Marzouk , Anthony Rey , Bertrand Gore , Nathalie Mesuret |
| music | Khyam Allami |
| camera | Sébastien Goepfert |
| cut | Lilian Corbeille |
| occupation | |
| |
As soon as I open my eyes (original title: À peine j'ouvre les yeux ) is a French-Tunisian film drama based on the script by director Leyla Bouzid and co-writer Marie-Sophie Chambon from 2015. The director's feature film debut was among other things with the audience award and the Europa Cinemas Label Award for the best European film at the Venice days 2015 , the Bayard d'or for the best debut film at the Festival international du film francophone de Namur and the Grand Prix Muhr Award at the Dubai International Film Festival.
action
Farah, a pretty young middle-class girl in Tunis, passed a very good high school diploma. It is summer 2010, a few months later the events will roll over in Tunisia, as a result of which the long-term president will leave the country and the world will look to this country on the Mediterranean. Some initial signs are already suggesting it. Farah is a whirlwind. She's enjoying life this summer. I want to go out, meet friends, sometimes get drunk with beer and have fun, the parents tolerate their daughter's hustle and bustle, even if the mother doesn't like it. Farah's mother wants her daughter to have a good future and is confident that she will study medicine after the summer. But Farah has very different wishes for the future. During the summer vacation she joined a rock band, eagerly rehearsing with them for the first public gig. She dreams of getting started as a singer. In addition, she has a fresh crush on a band member and secretly meets with him. The two are also intimate with each other. She more or less sneaks out of the house in the evening and to the rehearsals, lying to her mother about her whereabouts. What Farah does not know at the time, however, is that the band is already being watched closely by the police for the songs they are playing. They are considered to be too critical of the ruling system.
It doesn't take long for the mother to find out where Farah spends her time. The occasion was the visit of an old friend who warned her that her daughter would be in shady company and that a police operation would be imminent. He strongly urges her to keep an eye on her daughter and to stay away from the band and the places where they move. Discussions between mother and daughter arise, which continue to intensify. As the day of the gig approaches, Farah locks her mother up at home and runs into the night to perform. At the end of the first set, Farah wants to go to sort things out with the mother, but Borhène threatens her that she would then be kicked out of the band. So she stays and sings. It's going well for the band and Farah plans to advance her music career. The domestic situation worsens when the mother simply enrolls her in medical school. Farah is considering moving in with her boyfriend.
The manager Ali is busy filming the band during rehearsals and performances. Once when a concert was canceled by the police, Farah defiantly went on singing on the street. The band continues to play gigs, Farah sings the lyrics that her boyfriend writes until one day he is arrested by the police and interrogated and beaten during the night he has to spend at the police station. At the next rehearsal, there is an argument with manager Ali, whom the young man accuses of spying and of having handed him over to the police. Ali urges the band to defuse their lyrics and warns Farah about the police apparatus, Farah ignores both these and her mother's warnings in this regard. Your relationship with her boyfriend becomes more difficult because he is not as open-minded as his texts suggest.
In order to keep the daughter in check and to take her out of focus, it is decided that she should go to the father in Gafsa. Farah and his mother make their way to the Moncef Bey station in Tunis. While the mother is buying a ticket, Farah goes to get a drink. It does not come back, it has been swallowed by the ground and disappeared into the crowd. The mother panics in search of the daughter. As a result, she also meets her boyfriend in a dubious bar. He wants to make the matter public, but the mother doesn't want it. Instead, she has now also sought contact with Moncef on her own initiative, who finally explains to her where her daughter is. Farah was arrested at the train station. The mother, who once had her own experiences with the system, decides to rebel and get the daughter free. She literally besieges the police station and can no longer be fobbed off with excuses until it is finally free. But Farah has left traces. She was also ill-treated and sexually harassed while in detention. She also realized during interrogation that she was being betrayed twice. Once by band member Sami and further by her boyfriend, whose indiscreet comments about the sex life of the two were recorded on tape. Back at home, Farah struggles with depression and leaves the band. The relationship with the mother, which has since changed due to her search for her daughter, is taking a new turn. It is the mother who sings with Farah during her illness and thus helps the daughter to find her voice again. In the end she realized and accepted that she couldn't guide Farah according to her wishes. Even if things in the country may not change so quickly, both women have found each other again.
main characters
Farah , 18 years old, round face with shining eyes, framed by jumping curls, is rather delicate in stature but full of unbridled energy. She has a secret relationship with Borhène, like she is a member of the underground rock band Joujma . She is at an age when love and revolt are breaking out, but personal independence is not yet in place. The family's wishes seem almost stuffy to her, she wants to have fun and sing. She drinks beer in a bar with the guys in the band and also tries cannabis once, as some members of the band use.
Hayet , Farah's mother, incredibly proud of her daughter and her high school diploma, simply registers her for medical studies without her knowledge. Once the mother was a free spirit herself. Because of Farah's musical ambitions, there is a tense atmosphere in the family, which leads to overprotection of the mother and conflicts between the women. At first there is a kind of love-hate relationship between the two of them, which changes when Farah is arrested and the mother tries everything to get her daughter back.
Borhène , friend of Farah, oud player, lead guitarist and lyricist of the band, initially keeps the love affair with Farah secret from their family and the other band members. He seems to like it when Farah appears wild and free, but he also has tendencies to force her to expect how a girl should behave. After a very critical concert, he is arrested.
Mahmoud , Farah's father, transferred to the south of the country as a punishment for refusing to join the leading party, is often absent from family life. In general, he doesn't care much about Farah. He does not deal with the daughter, but rather agrees with her out of comfort. He only becomes an intermediary when the relationship between mother and daughter starts to stumble.
Moncef , ex-boyfriend of Hayet's mother in her youth, with whom she broke off contact when he joined the State Security Service. He reports to Hayet about the people Farah "hangs out" with, drinks and smokes, and warns them of the consequences.
background
According to the director, the title of the film stands for a teenager who opens his eyes and begins to take control of his life and is confronted with obstacles - family, society and the state. It would also stand for a Tunisia that a few months before the revolution begins to open its eyes and realize what is happening in society. Starting with the time of summer 2010 until December, the film goes back to the beginnings shortly before the revolution and thus captures the mood shortly before the upheaval. Young people push for freedom. With the conflicts of the film, the director takes up some of the points that will later lead to rebellion. Control and surveillance, represented by the arrests of the band members, the prevailing corruption in the country, using the example of Hayet when she bribed the police officer so that he could start the investigation immediately. It also shows the "burden of traditional society and its chauvinistic values" in the form of the scene where she lets Hayet go to the bar to see her daughter's boyfriend, staring into a room full of men. The film focuses on the relationship between mother and daughter, showing love and letting go. Of course, Hayet loves her daughter and, to a certain extent, understands her urge for freedom and change, but in contrast to the carefree and unrestrained youth of Farah, Hayet knows what consequences it can have if you rebel in a police state would. In her love and concern for her daughter, the mother inevitably clashes with her again and again. The father, with his employment in the south, forms the anchor point in the region of the phosphate mines, where workers repeatedly revolt because of the working and living conditions. Even the father cannot succeed in being transferred back to the city of Tunis under this system; he is not adapted. The film deals with the questions of the liberation of family, society and the system. The example of Farah, who loudly wants her voice to be heard through the songs that accompany the entire film, shows how she is "downright crushed" in this way. The director said the film was not autobiographical, but as a young person she too experienced betrayal in her environment. Everyone in Tunisia had to make concessions at some point or faced a host of obstacles, according to Bouzid.
Emergence
The film was made for several reasons, one of the most important was when the revolution in Tunisia took place on the streets in 2010/2011 and many people were filming the events, the director knew that one would finally be able to talk about the past and the future Police state under the presidency Zine el-Abidine Ben Alis to speak. Another point was that she had already made the short film Soubresauts about a mother-daughter relationship, which, however, was played more from the mother's point of view, and based on this she wanted to make a film from the point of view of a daughter. So in 2011 she began to write about the energy of the youth of Tunisia who were gradually exposed to the destruction by the system. The first idea for the implementation for the film was to make the leading actress appear as a blogger who would keep her blog hidden from the family. However, since a film with such a leading actress who only sits in front of the computer would not be very appealing cinematically, Bouzid and her co-writer Chambon again discussed the role of the character Farah, and so the idea of having Farah be a singer arose . That was also close to Bouzid, who had often attended concerts herself during her high school days where bands performed that were no longer there the next day. This band idea provided a lot of pictures in her head and made the idea of the film grow bigger and bigger as I was writing it. She first wrote the story, describing the type of music and instruments she envisioned for the film, and then went to see a friend with whom she discussed her French lyrics. She met with a lot of musicians and then met the musician Khyam Allami and that was the real luck who was able to write the songs for the voice of the leading lady. Bouzid met him by chance during a concert in Paris, where he was performing with his band "Alif Ensemble". Bouzid was carried away by the music, presented by 5 musicians from different Arab countries, the well-known artist Allami one of them. For the fictional band, she wanted an electric rock band with electric oud , an acoustic mixture of rock and electronic music with the energy of popular traditional Tunisian music, of mezwed and the female chants from the region around El Kef , the "Mensiettes". She worked on this together with Allami.
In order to anchor the story further, Bouzid chose the Tunisian revolution as a background, in order to capture the collective urge that ultimately led to the overthrow of the former Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali through the character Farah. The mother-daughter team forms the core of the family history. The Farah actress comes from a sighting of 500 girls and young women between the ages of 16 and 25. She is not a professional singer and a newcomer to the camera. At the casting, she sang Amy Winehouse , much to the delight of Bouzid, and it turned out that she was not a chorister as previously stated by her. For the role of mother, she envisioned a woman with curly hair, a bit older but beautiful, who with the actress Ghalia Benali, a well-known and professional singer, visually resembles the role of Farah as mother. Since Benali himself was very busy professionally, the two main actresses did not spend that much time together in advance, but the chemistry between the women was right from the start, according to Bouzid. For the role of Inès, Bouzid rewrote the character after she saw Deena Abdelwahed at a concert. Originally, the keyboard player should also be a male role. Ahlem, a supporting role in the film in the figure of housekeeping, played by Najoua Mathlouthi, in Farah's parents' house, comes from an encounter between Bouzid and her in the house of leading actress Baya Medhaffar. She observed the close relationship between the women and decided she would be exactly who Bouzid envisioned for the domestic help role. With her class she stood out from all the other women in the casting. Filming was a little difficult with her as she couldn't read, but the fact that she often brought in proverbs enriched the role, as Bouzid once said.
According to Bouzid, it was important to keep this flare-up of the revolution in Tunisia. She wanted to show what the Tunisian people had experienced in the 23 years of Ben Ali reign in suffocated everyday life or under police violence. It was clear to her that she had to make this film quickly while the wind of freedom was still noticeable. It was also important to her that the characters were coherent. She wanted to be honest with her fiction and its "contextual, historical anchoring". Above all, she wanted to show people's fear and hold onto it as a kind of “protective shield against a possible flare-up”. While filming, she noticed that people had already given up some of their reflexes at that time. For Bouzid a kind of good sign that indicates that the worst is already behind you. However, she was also of the opinion that one had to defend oneself against this forgetting, in which she saw one of the tasks of the cinema. She was interested in filming “the energetic and creative young people” who would struggle daily for their livelihoods, but which would rarely be talked about, being replaced by reports of extremism and violence. Through the character of Farah, she wanted to give this youth a voice by showing that this generation is being silenced by a terror that would come out of the system. By filming in places with an everyday atmosphere, she wanted to capture the people who live and work there.
Filming
The shooting was preceded by 3 weeks, during which the members of the band rehearsed in the morning. In the afternoon the director rehearsed the script's scenes with one or more actors. There were a few changes to the dialogues at the suggestion of the main actress, Ghalia Benali, who is herself a mother in real life, and thus brought in her experience of how a mother would say something. Shooting started on September 1, 2014, for 6 weeks until October 11, 2014. The shooting locations were Tunis, the phosphate mines of Gafsa - a place from which resistance against the Ben Ali regime started long before Mohamed Bouazizi's spontaneous combustion , in 2008 riots formed there - for Bouzid a homage to the miners. Another location was the station at Souk Moncef Bey, the collection point for shared taxis - minibuses with a maximum of 8 passengers plus driver, the Louages in Tunisia - and bus departures to the southern cities of the country such as Sousse , Monastir , El Jem , Mahdia , Sfax , Gabès , Sidi Bouzid , where Farah disappears without a trace.
The shooting of the musical scenes was technically challenging because the music had to be recorded live at the same time. This is how the first large musical scene in a restaurant with real visitors came about. The people were aware that they were there for a film shoot, but everything was prepared like for a real concert. With her cameraman Sébastien Goepfert, Bouzid wanted to have captured the scene for real, with all the emotions and not in the end to leave the impression of a music video. There were 5 or 6 takes of this scene, Bouzid recalled in an interview with Stephen Saito, after about the 3rd repetition the restaurant visitors were already singing along, very nice for Bouzid to see, as they were still there with joy after the last repetition . In another bar scene, while Farah is talking to her father Mahmoud, the director's father, Nouri Bouzid , can be seen in the background . Luck for the filming of the scene in which mother Hayet drives a car at high speed was also that Ghalia Benali drives a car herself and so was not at all afraid of the high speed, so the fear for the daughter could be captured well. There was only one day of shooting for this technically challenging scene, but everything went well, according to Bouzid. The director described the shoot as “the most delicate scene” when Hayet went to the bar to meet her daughter's boyfriend, Borhène. Real visitors were again present as extras in the bar, a place with a bad reputation, frequented only by men who "looked almost obscenely" at the entering actress. The unpleasant pressure was noticeable even for the women in the team, reported Bouzid, as the scene with actress Benali had to be shot several times and the leading actress had to expose herself to these looks over and over again.
reception
The film, produced by Blue Monday Productions (France) and Propaganda Production (Tunisia) and co- produced by Hélicotronc (Belgium), was made with the support of 13 other ministries, film festivals and funds, for example the Sanad Abu Dhabi Film Festival Fund , the Center National de la Cinématographie or the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture and celebrated its world premiere at the Venice Days of the Venice International Film Festival 2015 . The Canada premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival followed in mid-September 2015 . The film premiered in Tunisia in November 2015 at the Carthage Film Festival and in Germany for the first time in November 2015 at the French Film Days Tübingen-Stuttgart . After exactly 5 years and one day after the end of the regime of long-term ruler Ben Ali, the film was shown in Tunisian cinemas and, according to Bouzid in an interview on the occasion of the US premiere at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival , sold 50,000 tickets by then, a lot According to her, for such a small country with few movie theaters. The film has been shown at numerous festivals around the world. The theatrical release in Germany was on October 6, 2016. DVD-Video and Blu-ray Disc were available in the original version with German, French and English subtitles from May 3, 2016. The working title of the film is Dieu protège ma fille and, in addition to more than 10 other international titles, also has the English title As I Open My Eyes . The commission of the National Center of Cinema and Image (CNCI) selected the film in September 2016 to represent Tunisia as the best foreign language film at the upcoming 2017 Academy Awards . Originally, Fleur d'Alep by Ridha Behi was supposed to enter the competition for Tunisia, but since the film had not yet been shown it did not meet the necessary criteria for an application. That is why Bouzid's film was also submitted, which was apparently assessed as a “lack of seriousness” and is said to have led to the disqualification of the Tunisian entry.
music
The soundtrack for the film was released by the label: Nawa Recordings on March 18, 2016 and contains 14 tracks, composed, arranged and produced by Khyam Allami for the fictional band of the film Joujma . Supported by oud background music and another track by Maurice Loucas with the title Benhayyi Al-Baghbaghan (en: Salute the Parrot), the development came about in the early phases of the casting, the pre-production and the final sound mix, thanks to close cooperation between Allami and Bouzid a new and youthful sound for the band, as the label published in its description of the soundtrack. The sound is shaped by Tunisian folk music, such as the vocalizing songs of the city of El Kef, but also inspired by artists such as Patti Smith , PJ Harvey and alternative rock bands such as Sonic Youth and Stereolab . All members of the fictional band Joujma were amateurs, with the characters Ska and Sami being brothers in real life. Allami worked a lot with the character Farah in advance to find her voice for the songs. He taught the fictional band the songs by heart, careful to respond to their natural musicality and also to maintain the natural but wanted effect of amateurs during the performances. The Tunisian writer Ghassen Amani wrote the lyrics in the colloquial language of Tunisian Arabic, adapted to the “narrative and dramatic context of the film”. For Allami, Amani's lyrics were a kind of catalyst for his compositions. All songs were played live by the band and then recorded in a recording studio in Tunis for the first part of the album, provided with illustrations by the Lebanese designer Jana Traboulsi and published together with a brochure in Arabic, English and French.
occupation
Baya Medhaffar at the César Revelations Dinner on January 11, 2016, plays Farah
Ghalia Benali at the opening ceremony of the Carthage Film Festival 2018, Tunisia , plays Hayet
Reviews
The film was able to convince 100% of the 18 critics on Rotten Tomatoes . It received a score of 74 out of 100 possible points on Metacritic , based on 11 reviews, including the reviews of the Los Angeles Times , Variety and The New York Times . La Maison de L'Image in Aubenas put together a very extensive press kit on the occasion of the encounter of European cinema in 2016 . It contains 46 pages of a collection of reviews from publications such as Positif No. 659 from January 2016, the Cahiers du Cinema No. 718 from January 2016, Le Monde from December 23, 2015, La Croix from December 23, 2015, Liberation from December 22, 2015, Jeune Afrique from December 23, 2015 and many other French-language magazines or specialist magazines whose response to the film was largely positive.
After the premieres at festivals in Venice and Toronto , Boyd van Hoeij picked up the film for The Hollywood Reporter and, as an overall conclusion, attested it to be “a frequently known but touching story”, in which Ghalia Benali “has a hard time expressing her rebellious rock Keeping Chick Daughter at bay ”. He praised the work of cameraman Goepfert during the concert sequences, in which he showed himself "from his best side" and thus helped the film with a "feeling of power and visual momentum that fits the songs of the band".
E. Nina Rothe met the director of the film for Huffpost on September 17, 2015 in the garden of the Villa degli Autori in Venice and asked in her summary to simply forget the fact that the audience at Venice Days, I chose this film as my favorite among “all the great films in this series”, and one should also forget the “fantastic appearances by Baya Medhaffer as Farah”, the “wannabe rock star and youthful 'revolutionary'” alongside the famous singer Ghalia Benali as "her strong, caring, beautiful mother Hayet". Rothe also asked to put aside the fact that the film was also funded by the SANAD Fund from Abu-Dhabi and that the "haunting songs and poetic texts by Khyam Allami that make up the soundtrack" are already known, because beyond all these testimonies " lies a great film. A film with heart and passion that can color dreams and inspire days ”.
In her film criticism to the German theatrical release Gaby Sikorski wrote for cinema that the film "almost a music film, in any case, a drama" was, from the director "an energy sparkling, barely veiled political statement" from the perspective of the young woman and her Mother did. Bouzid has “artfully and casually” “linked” the story of Farah and her family to the problems of the country. She further emphasized the important role of music in the film, “Arabic rock that is as catchy as it is innovative”, with which “traditional rhythms are combined with electronic, sometimes even unexpectedly glamorous sounds”. The fact that Farah is not a “big rock tube” would fit all the more “with the personality and the film”.
Also at the German theatrical release, editor, author and presenter Ullrich Sonnenschein dealt with Bouzid's “amazing” first film for epd Film , which would explain “the needs of an enlightened population for social freedom”. He saw in the “relatively open conclusion” also the “possible failure of a struggle that has no concrete goal” and which is also “not linked to a clear ideology”.
"Leyla Bouzid's hymn to freedom" is what Anaïs Heluin called his film viewing in the headline for Le Point in December 2015 and, with Bouzid's main character Farah, he felt somewhat reminiscent of the main character from the feature film Blue is a warm color by director Abdellatif Kechiche , with Bouzid had worked together as an assistant director. He pointed out that As soon as I Open my eyes alluded “heavily to the recent arrests of young artists under the guise of Law 52” and went on to say that when the director “condemns this law, it was used yesterday and today as a pretext for the arrest by people who are considered disruptive by the government ”then it would do so“ without words ”. For him the film is “un constat d'échec” (a mistake in itself), as Bouzid would be far from “expressing the discouragement” with which she would show how much “the past is a mirror of the present”. The “laconic but passionate relationship” between mother and daughter is by far the “most complex and interesting of the film”.
According to Bouzid, the film was very well received, as she said to her interlocutor Stephen Saito for The Moveable Fest in an interview. The people were consistently enthusiastic about discovering something about Tunisia that they hadn't known before. According to the director, it was enriching to see young people tell her that they had found themselves in the film. This is how Saito described the film with its “pronounced cultural sensuality” and “emotional sensitivity” in the face of the numerous performances by Farah “full of thrills of rebellious art” in his publication on the occasion of the film's release in New York City and Los Angeles in September 2016. As a “wonderful, dynamic and moving film” which, because of “the clever dramaturgy, the rousing music and the unleashed camera by Sébastien Goepfert”, made Bouzid's first work what it is, “an artistic and human document of the highest quality “Hanspeter Stalder assessed the work for the Swiss portal Der Andere Film in his consideration.
Awards
- 2015: Europa Cinemas Label Award - Venice Days of the Venice International Film Festival 2015
- 2015: Audience Award - Venice Days of the Venice International Film Festival 2015
- 2015: Bayard d'or - Festival international du film francophone de Namur
- 2015: Audience Award for Best Film - Festival International du Film de Saint-Jean-de-Luz
- 2015: Best Film Jury Award - Festival International du Film de Saint-Jean-de-Luz
- 2015: Jury Prize Best Actress - Baya Medhaffer - Festival International du Film de Saint-Jean-de-Luz
- 2015: Audience Award - Bastia (Corsica International Film Festival)
- 2015: Prix Erasmus - Festival international du Film de Bordeaux
- 2015: Special Jury Mention - Festival International de cinéma War on Screen
- 2015: Ibis d'or Best Film Music - Festival du Cinéma et Musique de Film de La Baule
- 2015: Ibis d'or Best Actress - Festival du Cinéma et Musique de Film de La Baule
- 2015: Ibis d'or Best Film - Khyam Allami - Festival du Cinéma et Musique de Film de La Baule
- 2015: Young Jury Award - Festival Lumières d'Afrique de Besançon
- 2015: Best Newcomer Film - French Film Festival Tübingen-Stuttgart
- 2015: Tanit de bronze - Carthage Film Festival
- 2015: TV5 Monde Award Best First Work - Carthage Film Festival
- 2015: FIPRESCI Prize of International Criticism - Carthage Film Festival
- 2015: “Mention spécial” by the jury UGTT - Carthage Film Festival
- 2015: Best Technician Award - Carthage Film Festival
- 2015: “Mention spécial” - Ghalia Benali - Festival Cinéma Méditerranéen de Bruxelles
- 2015: Audience Award - Festival Cinéma Méditerranéen de Bruxelles
- 2015: Critics' Prize - Festival Cinéma Méditerranéen de Bruxelles
- 2015: Grand Prix "Muhr Award" - Dubai International Film Festival
- 2016: Kering Foundation “Women in Motion Young Talent Award” - Cannes International Film Festival 2016
- 2016: Best Film - East End Film Festival (EEFF) in London
- 2016: Sir Peter Ustinov Prize - Lucas
- 2017: Jury Prize Best Actress - Baya Medhaffer - Riviera International Film Festival
Web links
- As soon as I open my eyes in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- As soon as I open my eyes at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- I barely open my eyes in the online film database
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for I barely open my eyes . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; August 2016; test number: 161 499 K).
- ↑ a b c (as PDF) Dossier: À peine j'ouvre les yeux (As I Open My Eyes - I hardly open my eyes). - Les Grignoux , accessed October 7, 2019
- ↑ a b c Author: Melina Gills Tunisian Filmmaker Leyla Bouzid Debuts Musically Charged Drama at Tribeca 2016 (en). - 2016 Tribeca Film Festival , accessed August 5, 2019
- ↑ a b c Author: Stephen Saito Interview: Leyla Bouzid on a Revolutionary Vision for "As I Open My Eyes" (en). - The Moveable Fest , September 8, 2016, accessed October 5, 2019
- ↑ a b Author: Olivier Barlet “Coming to terms with the past will allow one to continue” (en). - Africultures , January 4, 2016, accessed October 8, 2019
- ↑ a b Author: Hanspeter Stalder - As I Open My Eyes. - The other film , accessed October 6, 2019
- ↑ DVD & Blu-Ray: A Peine J'ouvre Les Yeux. - SortiesDVD , accessed August 5, 2019
- ^ Author: Jean-Pierre Filiu "A peine j'ouvre les yeux" (fr). - Le Monde , January 1, 2016, accessed October 7, 2016
- ↑ As I Open My Eyes in the running for an Oscar nomination (en). - LUX , September 26, 2016 and furthermore Author: Neila Driss La Tunisie disqualifiée de la course aux Oscars (fr). - Tunis Webdo , October 12, 2016, accessed October 7, 2019
- ↑ As I Open My Eyes / a Peine J'Ouvre les Yeux (East). - Amazon , accessed October 6, 2019
- ↑ (as PDF) press kit 'La Maison de L'Image' (fr). - European Parliament , accessed on 6 October 2019
- ↑ Author: Boyd van Hoeij 'As I Open My Eyes' ('A peine j'ouvre les yeux'): Venice Review (en). - The Hollywood Reporter , September 3, 2015, accessed October 5, 2019
- ↑ Author: E. Nina Rothe Leyla Bouzid's As I Open My Eyes: The Willpower and Emotions That Make Up a Woman (en). - Huffpost , September 17, 2015, accessed October 5, 2019
- ↑ Author: Gaby Sikorski As I Open My Eyes - I barely open my eyes. - Art house cinema , accessed October 5, 2019
- ↑ Author: Ulrich Sonnenschein Review of As I Open My Eyes - I hardly open my eyes. - epd Film , September 23, 2016, accessed October 5, 2019
- ↑ Author: Anaïs Heluin Cinéma - Tunisie: l'hymne à la liberté de Leyla Bouzid (fr). - Le Point , December 30, 2015, accessed October 6, 2019