Tunisia Submits Toronto Title ‘Under The Fig Trees’ To International Oscars Race, Luxbox Unveils Deals

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EXCLUSIVE: Tunisia has submitted Erige Sehiri’s bucolic coming-of-age tale Under The Fig Trees, about a group of teenagers working as fig pickers over the summer, as its entry for the best international film Oscar.News of the selection came ahead of the feature’s North American premiere in Toronto’s Contemporary World Cinema program on Friday.The work originally world premiered in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in May and has since played at a host of festivals including Karlovy Vary, Melbourne and Sarajevo.Paris-based sales company Luxbox has unveiled a clutch of new deals to coincide with the Oscar announcement.Fresh sales include to Benelux (Liberation), Portugal (Nitrato), Spain (Atalante), Turkey (Bir Film) and Eastern Europe (HBO), adding to previously announced deals to France (Jour2Fête) and the Middle East (Mad Solutions)>The film marks Sehiri’s debut fiction feature after a number of award-winning medium and long-length documentaries including the 2018 work Railway Men, about train drivers who risk their lives to keep Tunisia’s crumbling rail network afloat.Sehiri, who has accompanied Under The Fig Trees to TIFF,  was raised in France and returned to her parents’ native Tunisia following the popular uprising in 2011.Working first as a journalist covering the aftermath of the revolution, she went on to build a career there as a producer and filmmaker, working under the banner of her La Marsa-based company Henia Production.She shot Under The Fig Trees guerrilla style over the summer of 2020 against the backdrop of her father’s native village of Kesra, a Berber village in northwestern Tunisia, renowned for its figts.Taking inspiration from the light-hearted dialogue of 18th Century French novelist Pierre de Marivaux,