Tribute to Claudia Cardinale: Screening of "The Island of Forgiveness" at the French Institute of Tunisia
In a posthumous tribute to international star Claudia Cardinale, the film "The Island of Forgiveness" by Ridha Béhi will be screened on Monday, October 13th at 6:00 PM at the French Institute of Tunisia (IFT). Released in 2022, this last film of the "most beautiful Italian woman of Tunis" of the 50s will be screened in the presence of the director and close friend of Claudia Cardinale.
This event will be an opportunity for the director to share with the audience memories of the actress and to look back on her "exceptional career, which has deeply marked the history of Tunisian, Mediterranean, and international cinema," according to the IFT. "The Island of Forgiveness" is a 1 hour 30 minute fiction film written, directed, and produced by Ridha Béhi. It sheds light on the issue of cohabitation between different communities in 1950s Tunisia. The director explores a new approach to "living together" and tolerance in our time.
The renowned Italian-Tunisian actress, naturalized French, passed away on the evening of Tuesday, September 23rd, at the age of 87, in Paris, after a distinguished international artistic career that began in Tunis. Claudia Cardinale (April 15, 1938 - September 23, 2025) is one of the world's most famous celebrities born in Tunis, with an artistic career spanning over seven decades. At the age of 17, Claudia was elected "the most beautiful Italian woman of Tunis," a title that allowed her to take her first steps in cinema in 1956 with a leading role in "Chains of Gold" by René Vautier, and then in the feature film "Goha" by Jean Baratier, the first Franco-Tunisian co-production, in color.
"Chains of Gold" (18 minutes) allowed her to attend the Venice Film Festival and settle in Rome. The winner of the "Un Certain Regard" prize at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, "Goha" (83 minutes) is a film about the condition of Tunisian women before independence in a conservative patriarchal society. Claudia Cardinale played alongside Omar Sharif.
In the 1990s, a beautiful tribute was paid to this icon of world cinema by director Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud through a documentary titled "Claudia Cardinale, the most beautiful Italian woman of Tunis." An exclusive 26-minute interview was conducted with her companion Mohamed Challouf, who led the conversation.
The interview was conducted in 1994 at the Arab World Institute, nearly seven years after its inauguration in 1987. The director portrays the beloved Tunisian beauty and reveals the unpublished story of the diva, who spoke Italian and a little Tunisian dialect. He delves into the distant memories of this 1960s icon, who came from a Sicilian family that had settled in Tunisia for three generations.
"The Island of Forgiveness" tells the story of an Italian Christian family and their relationship with other communities on the island. The filming took place between April 21, 2019, and May 25, 2019, on the island of Djerba, chosen for its symbolic significance as a place of peaceful cohabitation between different communities.
The film had its world premiere at the 44th Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) in Egypt, where it was selected for the international competition. Claudia Cardinale (Agostina) is among a plethora of Tunisian and Italian actors in the film, including the late Hichem Rostom, Mohamed Ali Ben Jemaa, Badis Behi, Chedly Arfaoui, Mohamed Sayari, Kamil Cagniard, Jean Jacques Ciscardi, Sylvain Picard, Francesca, and Alessandro Schiavo, among others.
The film's synopsis reads: "Andrea Licari, now a successful writer, returns to his native island of Djerba to fulfill his mother Rosa's last wishes: to scatter her ashes at sea. Memories resurface, chaining together tender and peaceful episodes, as well as others that are bellicose and painful... Andrea remembers the collapse of a harmonious coexistence between different cultures: Spaniards, Greeks, Italians, Jews, and Muslims had already learned to 'live together' for centuries. Before our eyes, and as in a history book, a tumultuous and heart-wrenching drama unfolds through the eyes of a child, during the 1950s, on the eve of Tunisia's independence."
The title "The Island of Forgiveness" (Arabic title: Jazirat al-Ghufran) refers to the philosophical work "The Epistle of Forgiveness" (Resalat Al-Ghufran) by Abou Ala al-Maari. This fiction film addresses the issue of religion, adopting al-Maari's approach, and the contradiction between the essence of religion and the practice of the religious.
