Tunisian first-time director Abdelhamid Bouchnak is at the Venice Film Festival with “Dachra,” one of the first horror films to come out of the Arab world, which closed the independently-run Critics’ Week section on Friday.
It combines elements of American chillers such as “The Blair Witch Project” with visuals and tropes that are instead specific to Arabic cinema, and tackles the topic of witchcraft as a motive for murders, a practice that still exists in parts of North Africa.
Bouchnak, who studied filmmaking in his country and in Montreal, spoke to Variety about the challenges of going the genre rout for his debut which Celluloid Dreams is selling internationally.“Dachra” is the first horror film out of Tunisia and a very rare case of a horror film out of the Arab world at large.
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