French Director to host screening at Arlee Theater
[July 17, 2026]
On Saturday, August 1 Sonia Ben Slama's highly acclaimed festival
darling Machtat will have its first screening in North America outside
of a film festival or University event—and it will play at Mason City’s
Arlee Theater.
A French-Tunisian documentary filmmaker, Sonia grew up in Paris and
studied cinema and art at the University Sorbonne-Nouvelle. Machtat is
her second feature, with her first being Maktoub, a documentary sharing
the story of her grandmother’s wedding 70 years prior and her cousin’s
wedding in the same location, and the parallels between. Her third film
is currently in production and is being shot in Bloomington, IL, which
is what landed this showing at the Arlee of all places. Sonia has gained
a reputation for handling sensitive social and cultural topics with
honesty and fairness while still remaining mindful of the lives she’s
documenting and the story that needs to be told.
Machtat is a portrait of sisterhood, following Fatma and her two
daughters, Najeh and Waffeh, who are machtat—traditional wedding
musicians in Mahdia, a small city in Tunisia. The sisters follow
opposite paths: while Najeh, divorced, tries to remarry to escape the
authority of her brothers, Waffeh wishes to divorce her violent husband.
Fatma, their mother, navigates between the two, praying that things will
go better one day. Director Sonia Ben Slama notes, “a few years ago, I
directed my first film during the wedding of a cousin in Tunisia. I was
surrounded by women: my aunts, cousins, father’s cousins, all crushed by
their destinies and the weight of traditions. This became in fact a
central question in the film. For this wedding, the family hired “Fatma
and Najeh,” a traditional music band to accompany all the young bride’s
ceremonies.
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Right away, I found them intriguing, different from the to her women
here. They seemed more comfortable with their bodies and with
themselves. I watched them as they were setting up, nodding at known
faces. They had an assertive gaze, precise movements, a strong
presence. After the blessings, they began to sing a deep and
beautiful song, a long and sad poem.” She continues, “With this film
project, I wanted to capture the contours of these women’s existence
and their contradictions. They are constantly torn between their
duties as women and their desires as musicians, between the freedom
of summer and the monotony of winter, between their financial
independence and the authority of men surrounding them. The trust
that we build between us give me access to every aspect of their
life and they speak openly about what’s in their mind. They use the
camera as a tool: because we film, they are heard, their words and
their pain exist. Slowly, the film became ours and not only mine.”
Machtat is in Arabic, with subtitles in English. This 2pm show is
free to attend, and will run 1 hour and 22 minutes long. Following
the screening, guests are invited to stay for a Q&A with Sonia.
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