Haunting and Alternative Realities in Contemporary Tunisian Film
Sanabel Abdel Rahman
Haunting and Alternative Realities in Contemporary Tunisian Film
MECAM Papers English | 2026
Abstract
Haunting is usually thought of in relation to horror films. However, haunting can also act as a decolonial tool in helping expose past injuries incurred at the hands of colonial apparatuses. Much can be discovered by situating haunting, and concomitant supernatural spheres, within certain sociopolitical realities. Selected films and a novel offer a reading of hauntological instances permeating Tunisia’s postcolonial realities in the post–Arab Spring era.
Referencing a number of Tunisian films and one novel, light is shed on the implications of the national past and present via the lens of haunting. The phenomenon provides an appropriate framework by which to construct different contemporary realities.
A range of films from the last decade have dealt with the challenges of our day in Tunisia, such as poverty, migration, and protests, as well as lingering postcolonial legacies.
Niṣf Rūḥ (Half Soul, 2023), Ākhir Wāḥid Fīnā (The Last of Us, 2016), and Ashkāl (Shapes, 2023), as well as the Tunisian novel Al-Maṣabb (The Dumping Ground, 2016), are mobilised to offer a reading of hauntological instances within the country’s sociopolitical realities.
Context
Haunting, as exhibited in these works, underlines the protracted postcolonial moment informing both Tunisia’s past as well the post–Arab Spring vacuum of its present. While certain spectral transformations nod to the sociopolitical impetus behind crossing the Mediterranean, others provide a shrewd commentary on poverty in Tunisia – a lingering trace of French colonisation.
