A Tale of Love and Desire

A couple of years ago, a call for teaching Arabic at French schools sparked a heated debate in France, with the right-wing critics warning that the Semitic language would expose the young French Arabs to extreme ideas and possibly terrorism. In her second feature, A Tale of Love and Desire, Tunisian writer-director Leyla Bouzid shows the world and her lead character, an 18-year-old French-Algerian university student named Ahmed, that Arabic is a sensual and erotic language.