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Mood:
Sincere Clever Contemplative Touching
Plot:
Follow Your Dream Family Relations Immigrants Parents and Children Family Life Working Class Cooking and Food Hopes more...
Genres:
Drama Foreign
Time/Period:
Contemporary 21st Century
Place:
Europe France Seaport
Praise:
Award Winner Critically Acclaimed Prestigious Awards Venice Festival Winner
Style:
Talky
Attitudes:
Serious Realistic Slow

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Overview

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The Secret of the Grain, 2007

Starring: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi

Directed by: Abdel Kechiche

Written by: Abdel Kechiche

Language: French, Arabic, Russian

Country: France

Runtime: 151 min

MPAA Rating:

Rating:7.3

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Profile of The Secret of the Grain

The Secret of the Grain can be described as sincere, clever, and contemplative. The plot revolves around following your dreams, family relations, and cooking and food. The main genres are drama and foreign. In terms of style, The Secret of the Grain is talky. In approach, it is serious and realistic. The storytelling is slow paced. The Secret of the Grain is located in France. It takes place in contemporary times. The movie has received attention for being a Venice Festival winner and critically acclaimed.

Summary of The Secret of the Grain

At the port of SÃ¨te Mr. Slimani, a tired sixty year old, drags himself towards a shipyard job which has become more and more difficult to cope with as the years go by. He is a divorced father who forces himself to stay close to his family despite the scissions and tensions which are easily sparked off and which financial difficulties make even more intense. He is going through a delicate period in his life and recently, everything seems to make him feel useless; a failure. He wants to escape from it all and set up his own restaurant. However it appears to be an unreachable dream given his meagre, irregular salary which is not anywhere near enough to supply what he needs to realise his ambition. But he can still dream and talk about it with his family in particular. A family which gradually recompacts around this project which comes to symbolise the means to a better life. Thanks to their ingeniousness and hard work this dream soon becomes a reality... Or almost...

Details

Language:	French, Arabic, Russian
Country:	France
Release date:	April 2008
Runtime:	151 min

Cast and Crew See all

Habib Boufares

as Slimane Beiji

Hafsia Herzi

as Rym

Photos See all

The Secret of the Grain (2007)

Users Reviews See all

completely miscategorised

Some has tagged this with the "feel good" gene. I don't know how anyone who has actually seen the end of this film can possibly call it feel good. Read and rate it

09.May.2012
|
by: Killthepopular
Killthepopular rated this movie2/10Bad

Just when you thought it had all gone wrong...

26.December.2011
|
by: Roelof Bijnema
Roelof Bijnema rated this movie9/10Amazing

Just when you thought it had all gone wrong...

Very intense, sad movie with banality bringing the hero down. This script would have been impossible to film in the Anglo-Saxon world. It either must have a deeper cynicism, or a happy ending. But this French-Tunisian film has a load of sweetness about family ties and friendship to brave bureaucracy and concealed racism. Yet, for want of a nail, the shoe was lost... 61 year old Sliman Beji is a north-African immigrant in a French port town. He scrambles to support his divorced wife, their children as well as maintain the relationship with his new love and her daughter. He has been working in the ship-yards and suffered the degraded position as an immigrant worker, all for the sake of having his children acquire a better position in France. By now, he loses his job on the yard, because he is regarded as French, and the yards prefer to hire cheap (new) immigrant labor. He is haunted by feelings of inadequacy when especially the daughter of his lover steps in to help him build a new source of income: a restaurant on a ship. Then he is confronted by the racism and bureaucracy of modern France, which (in contrast with the wharf) is treating him as an immigrant. 'This is the France you know' is a phrase that is featured repeatedly. In spite of the barriers the French throw up, Sliman's social network chips in to help. His children, his former wife, his friends. Everybody helps in order to restore the ship, build the restaurant and throw at least one big couscous party, to show the authorities what Sliman is capable of. When everything seemed to have gone wrong, things take a good turn. yet you never succeed in shaking off the creeping premonition that fate will eventually NOT smile on Sliman.

26.December.2011
|
by: Roelof Bijnema

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