Land of Barbar

Fredj Moussa / Tunisia / 2025 / European Premiere / 11 min.

synopsis

The parable, formed by evocative images of unveiled and veiled faces, traditional fabrics, and freely grazing animals, is wedged between the lines of a paragraph from Boccaccio's Decameron. This visual interlude in the story of a girl who, while asleep, drifted from the Aeolian Islands to the North African coast near the city of Sousse in present-day Tunisia, reflects Western ideas about the former Barbary Coast.

“The maiden, hearing these Latin words, concluded that a contrary wind had driven her back to Lipari; and, getting up, she looked around her, and not recognizing the country, and seeing herself on the shore, she asked the good woman where she was.
The good woman replied:
‘My daughter, you are near Susa, in Barbary.’
Hearing this, the maiden was grieved that God had not sent her death, fearing shame and injury; and, not knowing what to do, she sat down at the bottom of the boat and began to weep.”

Source: Giovanni Boccaccio. Dekameron. 1886. Translated by John Payne.

biography

Fredj Moussa (b. 1992) is an artist and filmmaker living between France and Tunisia. In 2024, during his residency at Villa Medici, he worked with stories from pre-Islamic times as they appear in several tales from Boccaccio's Decameron. He presented his film Solar Noon at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival in 2022.