Mehdi Hmili

Directing

Birthplace: Tunis, Tunisia

Mehdi Hmili is a Tunisian writer and filmmaker. He studied cinema in Tunisia before graduating from the Paris Film School. While in France, he directed his short trilogy about love and exile — X-MOMENT (2009), LI-LA (2011), and THE NIGHT OF BADR (2012). His first feature-length film, THALA MON AMOUR (2016), was selected for several worldwide film festivals like the Torino and Carthage film festivals and won several prizes. Hmili is part of a new wave of young Tunisian filmmakers and is a major figure in the current Tunisian cinematographic landscape. He is also a popular poet in Tunisia, known for his poems against the regime of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, and founded Yol Film House in Tunisia, which produced several award-winning fiction films and documentaries in several international festivals. His last documentary film FOULEDH was selected for La Fabrique Cinema at the 72nd Cannes Film Festiva and won several development prizes such as the El Gouna Film Festival Award and the Special Mention of the Film Prize of Robert Bosch Stiftung 2019.