Mirroring the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in 2010, the film Harka tells an all-too-common story of bitter isolation and hopelessness. The plot follows Ali, a young Tunisian selling contraband gas on the black market, whose dreams of a better life come crashing down following the death of his father.
Adam Bessa’s depiction of Ali, a character he says will never leave him, has made him a favourite at the festival circuit this year. When Harka had its premiere at Cannes Film Festival this year, it earned Bessa the Un Certain Regard Award for Best Performance. At the Red Sea International Film Festival earlier this month, Bessa was awarded the Silver Yusr Award for Best Actor, while Lotfy Nathan won the Silver Yusr for Best Director.
Bouazizi set himself on fire in in Sidi Bouzid, protesting many of the conditions depicted in Harka — an event widely seen as the start of the Tunisian Revolution and the Arab uprisings.
To prepare for the part, the French-Tunisian Bessa, aged 30, had to isolate an apartment in Tunis for three weeks and nurse a loneliness that became “a form of schizophrenia".
However, this form of loneliness was quite unlike the isolation we’ve come to associate with the term "post-pandemic". Bessa took on a life he knew many downtrodden young men in Tunisia were enduring. He spent his nights drinking alone and his days wandering the blistering streets with a hangover, in much the same way Ali does in the film while selling contraband gas — a source of income that barely gets him by.
“I told the director that I needed a few weeks by myself,” Bessa says. “We worked a lot on the scenario, but I just needed to get everything. I had to find the way Ali walks. How he simply walks across the street, sits down someplace, orders a coffee.
“I was wondering, reading the script, what it would be like to be hungover at 50°C, while you have to stand in the sun. You see how people around live and how things are. The contrasts must be hell in your head.”
After days of cycling through drunken nights and subsequent mornings, walking dehydrated and without direction down the streets of Tunis, Bessa began experiencing several side effects. His head constantly hurt and his vision began to fork.
“You start looking at things differently,” he says. “Your gaze starts to change and then after a week, you really feel the need to talk. It hurts for a week and then the need disappears. But something else appears. You start talking to yourself. You ask the questions, and you make the answers. Dialogue forms naturally.”
These seething conversations loom in Harka through Ali’s silence. The film is ensconced in his perspective, and as his experiences become more taxing, and the society and system in which he is struggling to survive in persistently marginalises and deadlocks his opportunities.
“With alcohol and tiredness, a form of schizophrenia starts to appear,” he says. “Madness is always there, and by the end, it’s growing.”
Bessa’s performance is charged by what he refrains from showing. Ali meets every pushback in his life with a defeated resolve, from his father’s death and being beaten by the police to realising he is unable to care for his younger sisters.
It is a subdued and nuanced performance that reaches its peak the moment Ali’s sanity breaks as he sees the immutability of the status quo. It is the film’s electric climax, which viscerally disintegrates the audience-performer barrier. The film tenses and paces quicker from this point on, and by the end of it, the hell that Bessa imagined manifests.
The film’s ending draws obvious connections with the story of Bouazizi. While Ali’s story parallels Bouazizi’s in many ways, Bessa says Harka isn’t specifically about Bouazizi, but Ali, and the many iterations of him that exist around the world.
After his excursion of solitude, Bessa followed Ali’s experiences by shadowing smugglers who brought in contraband gas into Tunisia through Libya. Bessa was put in touch with the group through Nathan, who had spent the past four years in Tunisia, working on the script and immersing himself in its world.
“I didn’t want to lie to them, so I told them I was an actor. They’re really smart and very dangerous,” he says. “We were at a cross between Algeria and Libya, and it was a different vibe from Tunis. They started trusting me as we spent more time together. They showed me the gasoline. They’re a bit like pirates, a bit mad in a way, very intense.”
After this unofficial vetting process, Bessa was finally offered to ride along on a smuggling operation.
“We went to Libya,” he says. “They were driving 180 kilometres an hour on a dirt road, lights out at night. They’re completely crazy. When they see police, they flip the finger and laugh. They’re super intense. They don’t care about the law.
"They don’t care about anything. You know, during the pandemic, they brought the respirators into Tunis. They were mocking the government in a way, saying we managed to bring 400 machines and you didn’t. So, you know, people love them.”
Now more than a year since living and depicting Ali, Bessa says he can still feel the character within him. “Characters like that, they live with you for life,” he says. “You’ll never get rid of him because he is a part of you. There are a lot of Alis in the world."
Bessa has recently finished filming Extraction 2, reprising the role of Yaz Khan opposite Chris Hemsworth’s Tyler Rake. The experience of working on a Hollywood blockbuster has been different.
“It’s lighter,” he says. “The seriousness of it is very much the same. Even in big films, you mustn’t fall into a trap of being lazy and you should work as much as possible with being honest with what you play.”
Scroll through images of the Yusr Awards at the Red Sea Film Festival 2022 below
Children who witnessed blood bath want to help others
Aged just 11, Khulood Al Najjar’s daughter, Nora, bravely attempted to fight off Philip Spence. Her finger was injured when she put her hand in between the claw hammer and her mother’s head.
As a vital witness, she was forced to relive the ordeal by police who needed to identify the attacker and ensure he was found guilty.
Now aged 16, Nora has decided she wants to dedicate her career to helping other victims of crime.
“It was very horrible for her. She saw her mum, dying, just next to her eyes. But now she just wants to go forward,” said Khulood, speaking about how her eldest daughter was dealing with the trauma of the incident five years ago. “She is saying, 'mama, I want to be a lawyer, I want to help people achieve justice'.”
Khulood’s youngest daughter, Fatima, was seven at the time of the attack and attempted to help paramedics responding to the incident.
“Now she wants to be a maxillofacial doctor,” Khulood said. “She said to me ‘it is because a maxillofacial doctor returned your face, mama’. Now she wants to help people see themselves in the mirror again.”
Khulood’s son, Saeed, was nine in 2014 and slept through the attack. While he did not witness the trauma, this made it more difficult for him to understand what had happened. He has ambitions to become an engineer.
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What sanctions would be reimposed?
Under ‘snapback’, measures imposed on Iran by the UN Security Council in six resolutions would be restored, including:
- An arms embargo
- A ban on uranium enrichment and reprocessing
- A ban on launches and other activities with ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, as well as ballistic missile technology transfer and technical assistance
- A targeted global asset freeze and travel ban on Iranian individuals and entities
- Authorisation for countries to inspect Iran Air Cargo and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines cargoes for banned goods
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
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10 tips for entry-level job seekers
- Have an up-to-date, professional LinkedIn profile. If you don’t have a LinkedIn account, set one up today. Avoid poor-quality profile pictures with distracting backgrounds. Include a professional summary and begin to grow your network.
- Keep track of the job trends in your sector through the news. Apply for job alerts at your dream organisations and the types of jobs you want – LinkedIn uses AI to share similar relevant jobs based on your selections.
- Double check that you’ve highlighted relevant skills on your resume and LinkedIn profile.
- For most entry-level jobs, your resume will first be filtered by an applicant tracking system for keywords. Look closely at the description of the job you are applying for and mirror the language as much as possible (while being honest and accurate about your skills and experience).
- Keep your CV professional and in a simple format – make sure you tailor your cover letter and application to the company and role.
- Go online and look for details on job specifications for your target position. Make a list of skills required and set yourself some learning goals to tick off all the necessary skills one by one.
- Don’t be afraid to reach outside your immediate friends and family to other acquaintances and let them know you are looking for new opportunities.
- Make sure you’ve set your LinkedIn profile to signal that you are “open to opportunities”. Also be sure to use LinkedIn to search for people who are still actively hiring by searching for those that have the headline “I’m hiring” or “We’re hiring” in their profile.
- Prepare for online interviews using mock interview tools. Even before landing interviews, it can be useful to start practising.
- Be professional and patient. Always be professional with whoever you are interacting with throughout your search process, this will be remembered. You need to be patient, dedicated and not give up on your search. Candidates need to make sure they are following up appropriately for roles they have applied.
Arda Atalay, head of Mena private sector at LinkedIn Talent Solutions, Rudy Bier, managing partner of Kinetic Business Solutions and Ben Kinerman Daltrey, co-founder of KinFitz
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