A Letter to Mohamed

“Free since January 14, 2011”—that’s what it says on the T-shirts that the people proudly wore for a while in Tunisia. It was on this day that despot Ben Ali left the country, and a new history of freedom began, from which Christine Moderbacher takes random samples in her documentary film A Letter to Mohamed. For example, there are the children who play in the ruins of a building on the wall of which someone has sprayed a polemic statement: “Stealing from the people to build such an ugly shack.” 

Under Ben Ali, a small elite brazenly became rich at the cost of the people; now there is hope for freedom, democracy, justice, and (this aspect, too, plays an important role), the return of tourism. What might freedom look like? It has to be a freedom that doesn’t come from above, like a gift. In 1956 president Bourguiba single-handedly took off women’s veils, as Christine Moderbacher shows with a historical film clip: “What one person gives, another can take,” she says from off camera. 

A Letter to Mohamed is a cinematic letter from the filmmaker to her friend in Belgium, the titular Mohamed, who left Tunisia. “Fleeing” and “self-immolation” share the same Arabic root—fire. Christine Moderbacher connects her letter to Mohamed with the name with which the Tunisian revolution began: with Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire. This film takes place against the backdrop of disillusionment, yet in the images is the trace of a fire that can be sparked at any time.