In her second feature, My Father Killed Bourguiba, Tunisian filmmaker Fatma Riahi examines her father’s role in the failed plot to overthrow the country’s first president, and explores how her father’s political choices affected her family after his imprisonment and how they shaped her life.
The film, produced by Riahi in collaboration with Dora Bouchcha and Lina Chabane (The Voice of Hind Rajab, Aisha Can’t Fly Away) of Tunisian film company Nomadis Images and Omar Ben Ali of SVP Productions, was selected for the Pitching Forum at Thessaloniki International Airport. The documentary festival will run from March 5th to 15th.
“My Father Killed Bourguiba” is a deeply personal journey for the director, delving into his family’s archives to tell the story of his father, who was part of a group that plotted the overthrow of Habib Bourguiba, the country’s first post-independence president, in a military coup in 1987.
The plan fails, and the film’s title comes from the director’s five-year-old sister’s poor choice of words to a prison guard, which changes Riahi’s family and personal life forever. The director tried to understand her father’s choices based on family photos and letters she exchanged with her father while he was in prison more than 30 years ago, and reflected on how those choices had “the impact they had on me as a girl then and on the woman I am today.”
Speaking to Variety magazine in Thessaloniki, Riahi, whose first feature film A Haunted Past premiered at IDFA in 2018, explained that although Father Killed Bourguiba is closely related to the politics of the time, “this is not a political film.”
“I grew up caught between two seemingly contradictory ideas: the political vision that my father believed in and the one that Bourguiba championed,” she said. “Rather than resolving this contradiction, this film allowed us to embrace it and embrace its complexity.” She hopes that through the process of considering opposing viewpoints, she and others will be able to come to terms with the rifts that continue to divide Tunisia today.
“Perhaps it will help us understand and accept each other, even though we are different and come from different perspectives.”
Bourguiba, hailed as the “Father of Tunisia”, ruled Tunisia for 30 years after it declared independence from France. Despite his progressive views, he was widely seen as an authoritarian and despot. Riahi’s father, Mabrouk, on the other hand, was a member of the so-called “Security Group”, a more ideologically conservative movement determined to overthrow Bourguiba’s regime.
However, in November 1987, the day before Mabrouk and his co-conspirators planned their coup, then-Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali carried out a plot of his own, overthrowing the government and placing Bourguiba under house arrest. Two months later, Mabrouk and his fellow conspirators were arrested and imprisoned by Ben Ali’s regime.
It was a turning point for Riahi and her family. In the years that followed, her family faced systematic harassment from the regime and its supporters, all because they were forced into “a conflict I didn’t choose, a conflict caused by my father’s choices,” she said.
But throughout those tumultuous years, and even after their father’s death in 2005, the family remained silent about their ordeal.
“I hardly talked about what happened to my family, except for a few close friends,” Riahi said. “The silence was shaped by fear.”
Things changed in 2011. A popular uprising finally brought down the hateful Ben Ali regime. In the years that followed, Tunisia set up a Truth and Dignity Commission, and in the summer of 2017, Riahi and her sister were called to testify along with thousands of others opposed to Ben Ali’s regime, who were targeted and harassed for their opinions. That, she says, was “the defining moment that led me to make this film.”
“It was the first time I spoke about that period of our family’s history in front of a camera, in front of strangers, even in front of my sister,” said the director. Recounting how her family suffered as a result of Ben Ali’s collective punishment policies, Riahi “discovered the power of confession.” Afterwards, she realized she “wanted to talk more.”
But “Father killed Bourguiba” is not only a conversation with the past. Looking back on her journey to motherhood, Riahi said she has increasingly thought about what she will pass on to her two children, realizing that her choices can shape their lives, for better or for worse, just as her father helped determine hers.
“I try not to pass on trauma, fear and sadness to my children,” she said. “I tell my eldest son about the revolution, Tunisia and his grandfather, but I am still very selective.
“At the same time, through this film, my children are indirectly involved in this past, even if symbolically,” she continued. “I feel conflicted about that sometimes, but I also see it as a positive thing. By being encouraged to learn history, practice honesty, and question the past, they may become more aware, less fearful, and less silent than we are.”
Thessaloniki International Airport Documentary Festival will be held from March 5th to 15th.
