Name: Ghodwa
Genre: Drama
Released: 2021-03-06
Duration: 1 h 36 min
Rating: 6.3
Cast: Dhafer L'Abidine, Najla Ben Abdallah, Ahmed Berrhouma

I'm not Tunisian. I'm Palestinian. But even though this movie is deeply connected to Tunisia and its revolution, so much of what it made me feel was familiar to me. That feeling of waiting for justice. Of knowing that something happened and refusing to let people act as if it didn't. Of believing that you cannot simply move forward and forget what happened without accountability.

There are two ideas from the movie that stayed with me:

"Reconciliation can only come after justice has been achieved, and we have not achieved justice yet."

And:

"The truth, justice, and then reconciliation."

There were moments when I literally found myself tearing up. I had that feeling in my throat where you don't even know what to say, you just feel this sadness and heaviness inside you. I wasn't expecting the movie to affect me that deeply, but it did.

What stayed with me most was that Habib had never stopped asking for justice. He wasn't simply stuck in the past for no reason. He was stuck in a moment that, for him, had never truly been resolved. The revolution may have ended and years may have passed, but in his mind how could he move on when justice had not been done?

And because of his psychological state, people could dismiss him. They could tell themselves that he wasn't well, that he was living in the past, that he couldn't be taken seriously.

That's why his attempt to heal meant so much to me. It wasn't about him finally finding his voice, he already had one. It was about becoming strong enough for people to finally have to listen to it.

And that's why I couldn't see the timing as a coincidence. To me, there was something much bigger behind it. Sometimes a system isn't afraid of you when you're broken. It's afraid of you when you start becoming stronger, when you start healing, when your voice becomes harder to dismiss.

And Habib wasn't asking for revenge. He was asking for justice, not only for himself, but for everyone who suffered during the revolution. He wanted what happened to him and to all those people to be acknowledged. He wanted the people responsible to be held accountable. He simply couldn't accept that everyone could move on as if none of it had happened.

And Dhafer L'Abidine... wow.

His acting was honestly incredible. I felt his pain without him having to explain it. His eyes, his expressions, his silence, the way he carried himself, it all felt so real. I didn't feel like I was watching an actor trying to make me feel something. I felt like I was watching a person carrying all of that pain.

And that last smile at the end... I can't get it out of my head.

To me, it wasn't only about his son believing him. It felt much bigger than that. It felt like the realization that even if they silence one person, they cannot silence the truth forever.

His son was there, carrying the story forward. And that made me think about the next generation, about how, even if you stop one person from speaking, someone else will remember. Someone else will ask questions. Someone else will tell the story.

Even if you stop me, somebody else will speak. Even if you silence my voice, the truth will find another voice.

And that's what I saw in his smile. After everything he had suffered, there was finally a little hope, not because everything had been resolved, but because the story would not end with him.

That tiny smile was one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking moments of the whole movie for me.

I'm not Tunisian, but I could feel this movie. Maybe because some things don't belong to one country. Justice doesn't. The pain of being unheard doesn't. The need to remember doesn't.

I finished the movie and just sat there thinking... WOW.

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