With Un Fils, Medhi M. Barsaoui directs his first feature film, after a series of successful short films. He surrounds himself with Sami Bouajila and Nalja Ben Abdallah to tell the tragic fate of a fairly wealthy Tunisian family. While traveling in the south of the country, they find themselves trapped by a group of terrorists. A desert. It's a car. A couple. A child. An ambush. A victim. Here's how to summarize the beginning of A Son directed by Medhi M.Barsaoui.The story is set during the Arab Spring, between the Tunisian revolution and the Libyan civil war. On the way back from a family weekend, Farés and Meriem, a modern and privileged couple, find themselves beset by a terrorist group. They manage to escape, but cannot prevent the wounding of their son, Aziz, who finds himself between life and death… 
Barsaoui managed to provoke a real state of shock, which would last for a long part of the film. After a warm opening, centered around a group of friends enjoying their reunion, the filmmaker plunges the audience into a real bath of psychological violence. The narrative then becomes truly stifling. The viewer finds himself in the context of a small story that joins the big one.
A nightmarish dive as close as possible to the characters
The more the plot progresses, the more the nightmare in which are plunged the characters embodied by Sami Bouajila (prize for the best male interpretation in Venice) and Nalja Ben Abdallah becomes anxiety-provoking. Atmosphere aggravated by the moral choices faced by the characters: Farés, finding himself confronted with his own jealousy towards Meriem. All this, aggravated by an offer that tipped his prejudices… Offer of which we can not say more under penalty of spoiling the reader, but which allows to transform A Son into a real thriller. 
Thriller that becomes scary by these sets. For example, the arrival of a public hospital in poor condition, thus creating claustrophobia, suffocating the viewer. The hospital becomes a character in its own right, just like the desert, another main setting of A Son. Desert, which becomes a real source of danger, because it was here that the attack of the beginning occurred. It is when the characters leave their vehicles, that the film begins to calm down. The last act is slower compared to the rest of the film. A necessary evil, which allows the character of Farés to become human again. He who, because of the fear of losing his child, gradually becomes a monster. A punchy film about the fear of losing one's child, as well as the geopolitical landscape of Tunisia under Ben-Ali, A Son is an excellent surprise, thematically very rich and worth discovering.
Trailer A Son:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufSCpaSsuiI
