Ahmed Bennys

Movies

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask
Director of Photography
Explores the life and work of the psychoanalytic theorist and activist Frantz Fanon who was born in Martinique, educated in Paris and worked in Algeria. Examines Fanon's theories of identity and race, and traces his involvement in the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria and throughout the world.
The Sultan of the Medina
Director of Photography
A community of people rejected by society live in an abandoned residence located in a "Medina": an old town in Tunisia. Al Bab, a local criminal running the residence's prostitution circle, returns from prison on his wedding day. Fraj, his brother and the town warlock, falls in love with Ramla, his brother's future wife: He is the only man of the residence who has seen her face, as she is kept prisoner in one of the rooms until the wedding night.
Al-Mohammadia
Director
Mohammadia is one of those rare gems that have earned both critical acclaim and wide audience popularity over generations, a film that is both uniquely eccentric and utterly seminal. Traveling between contemporary Tunisia (shot in exquisite 16mm black-and-white) and 100 years prior to independence (narrated with ink-etched cutouts), Mohammadia re-envisages official colonial history. The film recounts, in the style of a folk tale, how Bey Ahmed I became smitten with Versailles after a trip to Paris and decided to build an equally sumptuous palace for himself in Tunis, driving his country to ruin in the bargain.