‘MAHMOUD BEN MAHMOUD’

To coincide with the screening of Les mille et une voix, director Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud discusses Sufism and the different brotherhoods across the world that feature in the film.

Born in Tunis in 1947, director Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud grew up in a cultured family related to the dynasty of the Beys of Tunis. He studied cinema at INSAS and completed his training in art, archaeology and journalism at the Université libre de Bruxelles. He began his film career as a scriptwriter, before moving into directing. Ten years after his first feature-length film Traversées (1982), he made Diamond Dust (Chich Khan) (1992), which was selected for the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. Other full-length films followed, including Les Siestes grenadines (2003), Le Professeur (2012) and more recently, Fatwa (2019). His documentaries include Italiani dell’altra riva (1992), Anastasia de Bizerte (1996), Albert Samama-Chikli (1996), Ennejma Ezzahra (1998), The Thousand and One Voices (2001), Fadhel Jaibi, a Theatre in Freedom (2003), and The Beys of Tunis, a colonial monarchy in turmoil (2006).