The H@llow Man — Kamel Laaridhi

Tunisia in 2059: a biochip regulates memory and suppresses emotion, hypnotherapy is illegal, and Taha goes secretly to a hypnotherapist who forges feelings out of poetry for people who can no longer make their own. Under hypnosis he walks into a house with no electricity and a bedbug problem, where three people are preparing a suicide bombing and the leader has ruled that a fetus under three months has no soul. Taha works out that the fetus is him. Laaridhi is 56 and this is his first feature: science at the Faculty of Tunis, then the Maghreb Film Institute, then years lighting buildings and archaeological sites before the camera department, then Inside Productions in 2011. Seventy-nine minutes, in competition at the 41st Critics' Week, public screening 2pm on September 9 in Sala Perla.