a SECond LiFE

When 12 year old Gadeha has a traffic accident, his mother can’t afford the medical treatment and is relying on the help of a random family she meets at the hospital. After Gadeha’s recovery, he and his family move into the home of their benefactors, where he befriends his ‘new brother’ Oussama. However, the secret that Gadeha’s mother is keeping might disturb the fragile balance.

Anis Lassoued: The film starts with the boys’ playing in the water, being a place of joy, fun and freedom. It is, however, the water that took Gadeha’s father away when he left the country in an attempt of illegal immigration. His destiny remains unclear, although Gadeha hopes that he has reached overseas and might come back as a wealthy man. That’s why the sea for him is as dreamy as it is scary. The movie ends with Gadeha interacting with the water. Running water is a metaphor for life, it signifies that life goes on, no matter what. Like Gadeha, who has learned that life is made of losses.

Lassoued: We never condemn Borkena. We discover her true self through her struggle to save her children and the things she did to grant them a better life. Throughout the movie we discover how broken she is: this woman was abandoned by the post-revolution Tunisian society and left by her husband in a precarious situation. Gadeha, nor the audience, know Borkena’s truth. Only as the film goes on, we will figure out if she’s really a monster or just a woman impeded by the hardships of life.

Lassoued: How much can we consider Borkena’s acts as criminal if they are shielded by love? After all, every act in the film could be considered an act of love from parents to their children. Do these acts ever cease to be crimes? No. A man who rapes a woman, then pampers her and takes care of her for years, will always be a rapist.

Lassoued: Gadeha switched to a new and better life. However, he knew there was a secret, and the film is based on Gadeha finding out. Oussama and Gadeha are two sides of the same story; both were used and deceived. Both of them are victims of adults who wanted to save them but ended up sacrificing them. What connects them is their friendship and love for each other. Gadeha found the brother he needed in Oussama, while Oussama found the friendship he needed in Gadeha.

Lassoued: She presents a new generation, embodying the hope for a better childhood. She is an amputated child, deprived of her father, her identity and her balance. In A SECOND LIFE,

children are embodied by the arrows, the parents by the arches. When the arches are broken, arrows can only be left behind.

Lassoued: The gap between social classes is growing. In the post-revolution era children from different classes do not meet each other in common spaces anymore; rich and poor do not live in the same neighbourhoods, do not go to the same schools, they don’t attend the same youth or sports clubs. For the poor class, all basic facilities are ruined, especially on the level of education – we have 100,000 students dropping out of school annually in Tunisia – as for the rich class, they have the privilege of privately owned facilities for literally everything. These two categories only directly come across each other on rare occasions, like at a crossroad, where one is wiping the windscreen of the other’s car. On a larger scale, they meet due to the exploitation of domestic workers, factory workers, field workers etc. with the rich enslaving their workers while sugarcoating it.

Lassoued: We witness rising crime and rape rate, aggression, religious extremism, terrorism and child prostitution. Envy is spread amongst people towards others living their best lives, laying on beaches. That is how social hatred was born in modern Tunisia. This mechanism is the reason why youngsters want to leave the country. Even dreams are ruined here, so the only dream they have left is to take off before celebrating their 18th birthday in order to benefit from Child Protection programmes in Europe. This has also become the dream of their parents as they struggle to send their kids away illegally to Europe, hoping for a better life.

Lassoued: Tunisians have to pay a price to survive. There are two opposite worlds in Tunisia: people being deprived of everything, versus others who have everything. Remember the scene in which Gadeha asks Oussama’s mother “Did you have a revolution too?”

Lassoued: I will always believe in the power of childhood and the capacity of children to change the world through their innocence, even if they mature early in life due to painful experiences. The power of childhood resides in their refusal of their parents’ decisions. My work is solely dedicated to children; A SECOND LIFE was an emotional experience for me, and for the children who played in it. They were the real directors of this film.

Gert Hermans