The producers of Canadian-Tunisian director Kays Mejri’s psychological thriller “The Sleeping Grotto” have revealed key casting – including renowned Tunisian director-actor Nejib Belkadhi – as well as Canadian and Tunisian distribution partners.
The new comes in advance of the project’s participation at the Fantasia Festival’s four-day Frontières Market, which kicks off July 23 with its high-calibre pitch event.
“Sleeping Grotto” (“La Dormante”) finds estranged brothers Youssef (Nidhal Essadi) and Idris (Montassar Tabben), who has travelled from Quebec with his wife Elissa (Joslyn Rogers), reunited at their remote family home in the forest of Aïn Draham in northern Tunisia, where a dark, long-buried family secret surfaces.
Belkadhi and Khouloud Jlidi round out the key cast. The film is the second feature from Mejri, who wrote the script with Quebec filmmaker and actor Joslyn Rogers. The Canadian producers are Bahija Essoussi and Samuel Gagnon of Montreal’s Objectif 9, which in recent years has been proactively scouting Arab-Canadian filmmakers to broaden the scope of their short and feature offerings
“We found out about Kays, who showed us a short he had made, which blew us away, and he mentioned he was working on ‘Sleeping Grotto’ and had a producer lined up in Tunisia,” Objectif 9’s Gagnon told Variety.
The Tunisian producers are Yasmine Dhoukar of Clandestino and Alexander Nass of Tunisian International Studios. The project has received a production grant from the Tunisian government.
“The grotto physically is a cave hidden in the mountains, but for me it also represents a place in the mind where we hide our secrets, where we don’t want to go,” Mejri told Variety. “It shows us who we really are.”
Mejri says one of his biggest cinema inspirations is David Lynch. “When I was living in Tunisia and dreaming about making movies I watched ‘Lost Highway’ and I got no sleep that night. I knew I wanted to make something like that.”
Mohamed Frini, head of Tunisian distributor Hakka Films, told Variety, “We have been following with great interest the work of Kays Mejri, a director whose work genuinely crafts stories from the dark aspects of Tunisian popular mythology blended with a special allure of Hollywood video-store cinephilia.”
“Sleeping Grotto” marks the eighth film in Montreal distributor Filmoption International’s long-standing collaboration with Objectif 9, Filmoption vice-president of acquisition and theatrical Isabelle Legault told Variety. “‘The film is a distinctive and original project, we were immediately taken by its eerie dreamlike atmosphere and Kays’ bold directorial vision,” she said.
At Frontières and beyond, Gagnon said the producers’ plan is to meet international sales agents and distributors. They are particularly interested in meeting with European producers, as Canada does not currently have a co-production treaty with Tunisia.
Fantasia Festival’s Frontières International Co-Production Market runs July 23-26 in Montreal.
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