The Odyssey of Forgetting: A Poignant Journey Through Memories
The narrative oscillates between reality and hallucinations, plunging the viewer into the fragmented memories of a childhood in La Goulette during the 1960s, a period marked by buried mysteries and unhealed wounds. The 36th edition of the Carthage Film Days (from December 13 to 20, 2025) will feature, in the official selection out of competition, the new film by Tunisian director Mokhtar Ladjimi, "The Odyssey of Forgetting". The film follows Zina, a retired history teacher and popular novelist known as Mamie Zina, who faces the first signs of Alzheimer's disease as she prepares to publish her autobiography. The narrative oscillates between reality and hallucinations, plunging the viewer into the fragmented memories of her childhood in La Goulette during the 1960s, a period marked by buried mysteries and unhealed wounds. Surrounded by her old friends rediscovered on Facebook and her daughter Lynda, a literature professor still shaken by the recent loss of her father, Zina tries to reassemble the pieces of her memory. However, the past she uncovers is troubled by illusions: real and imagined characters become confused, present-day figures transform into ghosts from the past, and the old family home becomes a theater of apparitions, superstitions, and secrets. Mokhtar Ladjimi builds a sensitive work where memory falters, where intimate history intersects with major History — from the Bizerte crisis to the distant echo of the Bay of Pigs — and where the boundary between truth and fiction disintegrates. With "The Odyssey of Forgetting", the Carthage Film Days offer a poignant introspective journey, a tribute to the storytellers of yesterday and today, and a disturbing dive into the meanders of a memory that struggles not to fade away.
