‘Arabic Cinema is Ditching Familiar Ideas,’ Tunisian Director Youssef Chebbi Tells Asharq Al-Awsat

‘Arabic Cinema is Ditching Familiar Ideas,’ Tunisian Director Youssef Chebbi Tells Asharq Al-Awsat
TT
20

‘Arabic Cinema is Ditching Familiar Ideas,’ Tunisian Director Youssef Chebbi Tells Asharq Al-Awsat

‘Arabic Cinema is Ditching Familiar Ideas,’ Tunisian Director Youssef Chebbi Tells Asharq Al-Awsat

The Maskoon Fantastic Film Festival concluded in Beirut with the film “Shapes” by Tunisian director Youssef Chebbi. This work, which combines imagination and reality, is Chebbi’s first feature film, and it is scheduled to screen in Lebanese theaters as of January 2023.

The film, hosted by Cinema Montaigne at Beirut’s French Cultural Center, focuses on one of the most significant symbols of Tunisia’s revolution in 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself alight and was the spark of the revolution. The director builds events enhanced with imagination and fantasia, using the Bouazizi story and fire that burns several characters on the way to freedom and salvation.

On the other hand, Chebbi tries not to limit his story locally by linking the Tunisian situation to what is happening around the world. He also raises many questions about the accomplishments of the Tunisian revolution and the instability in the country since its eruption.

The 90-minute film tells the story of Fatima (Fatima Ussifi) and her colleague, “Batal” (Mohammed Hussein Korei) who discover a burned body at a construction site in one of Carthage Gardens’ buildings.

The investigation of this mysterious case and another one that follows it starts, then Fatima and Batal manage eventually to solve the mysteries of the first one. The film features critical investigations that take the audience into a weird, ambiguous world of exciting events that captures the spectators’ attention from the beginning until the end, when the truth unfolds.

“Shapes” won a grant from the Red Sea International Film Festival that helped complete it, Chebbi told Asharq Al-Awsat. The film was shot in Tunisia around a year ago, in a massive residential complex known as “Carthage Gardens”, in which construction works stopped due to the revolution, and then resumed later. But why Chebbi chose this site for his film? “I chose it because it’s directly linked to Tunisia. It is a residential compound that was supposed to simulate the buildings of Dubai, and fulfill the dream of the old ruling class that ended with the revolution. In addition, the compound has a maze-like layout that I wanted the audience to enter during the film,” he replied.

Chebbi describes his film as “a dream that came true”. “I always wanted to make a film that combines fantasia with reality. It’s the kind of movies that we don’t see often in the Arabic cinema, especially in Tunisia,” he added.

When asked whether it was a tough challenge, he said: “the real challenge is choosing the movie’s topic and convincing the audience with its idea. People have watched exciting thrillers and understood them easily, but in “Shapes”, it’s different, because it is based on a universal idea that I tried hard to make it close to reality.”

Chebbi speaks about the Arabic cinema but focuses on the Tunisian works especially those made and distributed outside Tunisia, like in Paris. “I feel that the Arabic cinema has started to separate from reality and to head towards another world that explores imagination.” Would this affect our Arabic identity? “Not at all, on the contrary, I believe it will enrich and boost our culture.”

The talents working in the Saudi cinema industry caught the attention of the young Tunisian director. He liked their ideas, and met some Saudi scriptwriters including the mind behind “The Last Visit” film. “The Saudi cinema has great human energies that are ditching the traditional ideas, and I like that. The kingdom is ready today to make unique and exceptional cinema productions as long as they are based on good ideas,” he said.

The “Shape” film partook in several festivals including Cannes, Marrakesh, Toronto, Red Sea, and Maskoon in Lebanon, and won the “Critics” and “Best Music” awards at the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival.

Chebbi says he’s happy with the feedback. “The film attracted both the Arab and foreign audiences. This makes me so happy,” he noted.



‘The Osbournes’ Changed Ozzy’s Image from Grisly to Cuddly, and Changed Reality TV 

Metal-rock star Ozzy Osbourne holds a replica of his new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as he poses with his family during a ceremony on April 12, 2002, in Los Angeles. Pictured with Osbourne, from left, are Aimee, Sharon, Kelly, Jack and Louis. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)
Metal-rock star Ozzy Osbourne holds a replica of his new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as he poses with his family during a ceremony on April 12, 2002, in Los Angeles. Pictured with Osbourne, from left, are Aimee, Sharon, Kelly, Jack and Louis. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)
TT
20

‘The Osbournes’ Changed Ozzy’s Image from Grisly to Cuddly, and Changed Reality TV 

Metal-rock star Ozzy Osbourne holds a replica of his new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as he poses with his family during a ceremony on April 12, 2002, in Los Angeles. Pictured with Osbourne, from left, are Aimee, Sharon, Kelly, Jack and Louis. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)
Metal-rock star Ozzy Osbourne holds a replica of his new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as he poses with his family during a ceremony on April 12, 2002, in Los Angeles. Pictured with Osbourne, from left, are Aimee, Sharon, Kelly, Jack and Louis. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)

There was Ozzy before "The Osbournes" and Ozzy after "The Osbournes."

For much of his life, the Black Sabbath founder and legendary heavy metal frontman who died at 76 on Tuesday was known to much of the public as a dark purveyor of deeds.

Wild stories followed him. Clergy condemned him. Parents sued him.

But with the debut of his family reality show on MTV, the world learned what those who'd been paying closer attention already knew: Ozzy Osbourne was soft and fuzzy under the darkness.

During its relatively short run from 2002 to 2005, "The Osbournes" became a runaway hit and made stars of his wife Sharon and kids Jack and Kelly. But more than that, it made a star of the domesticated version of Ozzy Osbourne, and in the process changed reality TV.

In 2025, when virtually every variety of celebrity has had a reality show, it's hard to see what a novelty the series was. MTV sold it as television's first "reality sitcom."

"Just the idea of the Black Sabbath founder, who will forever be known for biting the head off a bat during a 1982 concert, as a family man seems strange," Associated Press Media Writer David Bauder wrote on the eve of "The Osbournes" premiere. But on the show, Osbourne was "sweetly funny — and under everything a lot like the put-upon dads you’ve been seeing in television sitcoms for generations."

Danny Deraney, a publicist who worked with Osbourne and was a lifelong fan, said of the show, "You saw some guy who was curious. You saw some guy who was being funny. You just saw pretty much the real thing."

"He’s not the guy that everyone associates with the ‘Prince of Darkness’ and all this craziness," Deraney said. "And people loved him. He became so affable to so many people because of that show. As metal fans, we knew it. We knew that’s who he was. But now everyone knew."

Reality shows at the time, especially the popular competition shows like "Survivor," thrived on heightened circumstances. For "The Osbournes," no stakes were too low.

They sat on the couch. They ate dinner. The now-sober Ozzy sipped Diet Cokes, and urged his kids not to indulge in alcohol or drugs when they went out. He struggled to find the History Channel on his satellite TV. They feuded with the neighbors because, of all things, their loud music was driving the Osbournes crazy.

"You were seeing this really fascinating, appealing, bizarre tension between the public persona of a celebrity and their mundane experiences at home," said Kathryn VanArendonk, a critic for Vulture and New York Magazine.

The sitcom tone was apparent from its first moments.

"You turn on this show and you get this like little jazzy cover theme song of the song ‘Crazy Train,’ and there’s all these bright colors and fancy editing, and we just got to see this like totally 180-degree different side of Ozzy which was just surprising and incredible to watch," said Nick Caruso, staff editor at TVLine.

Like family sitcoms, the affection its leads clearly had for each other was essential to its appeal.

"For some reason, we kind of just fell in love with them the same way that we grew to love Ozzy and Sharon as like a marital unit," Caruso said.

What was maybe strangest about the show was how not-strange it felt. The two Ozzies seemed seamless rather than contradictory.

"You’re realizing that these things are personas and that all personas are these like elaborate complex mosaics of like who a person is," VanArendonk said.

"The Osbournes" had both an immediate and a long-term affect on the genre.

Both Caruso and VanArendonk said shows like "Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica," which followed then-pop stars Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey after they married, was clearly a descendant.

And countless other shows felt its influence, from "The Kardashians" to "The Baldwins" — the recently debuted reality series on Alec Baldwin, his wife Hilaria and their seven kids.

"'The Baldwins’ as a reality show is explicitly modeled on ‘The Osbournes,’ VanArendonk said. "It’s like you have these famous people and now you get to see what their home lives are like, what they are like as parents, what they’re eating, what they are taking on with them on vacation, who their pets are, and they are these sort of cuddly, warm, eccentric figures."