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French Girl (Rated PG)
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 Original Title: Française
Country of Origin: France / Morocco (2008)
French with English Subtitles - 84 minutes
Genre: Drama
Distributor: ARP Sélection
Directed by Souad El-Bouhati
Starring Hafsia Herzi, Farida Khelfa, Maher Kamoun
Ten-year-old Sofia was born in France. She leads a happy and carefree life in the outskirts of a small French Town until one day, her father makes a snap decision to return to his roots in Morocco with the whole family in tow. Lost in a strange land, Sofia never stops trying to rekindle her relationship with her native France. TELERAMA (MAY 2008)
Translation of a review written by Mathilde Blottière
What is it to be French? The right to a land or a blood tie, a piece of paper, a feeling of belonging? All of these questions feed Française, the lean but strong first feature film on the fate of a studious teenager. Born and bred in a French suburb until she is 10, Sofia’s life turns upside down when her parents decide to go back to Morocco where they were born. A foreign land, for this young girl. Brutally pulled out of her childhood, she spends her Moroccan teenage years mulling her rebellion over her forced exile. Coming soon of age, the passionate Sofia is inhabited by one goal only: going back to her country France.
First, Française has a great quality: it is avoiding all the clichés traditionally tied up with immigration and ranging from delinquency to school failures.
By setting most of her film in Morocco, filmmaker Souad El Bouhati chose to highlight another point of view: that of a brilliant, freedom hungry young woman wrestling with a Moroccan society torn between its fascination and its repulsion towards France, the old colonizing power.
Supported by precise scripting that excludes “angelization” as well as “demonization”, the film exposes the ambiguities of this feeling through its secondary characters that are more complex than they appear. The mother, ruthless yet loving and the father, cowardly yet moving, ultimately want none other than to protect their daughter from disillusionment, even if it means to clip her wings.
Geographically held at a distance, France passes through the story like a ghostly, fantasized character as an obsession, a myth. Away from dubious sweeping statements, all throughout the story, Française deals with the themes of belonging and identity. But the main strength of the film has the name of Hafsia Herzi. Luminous and intense, the black-browed young woman confirms her real acting nature recently revealed in the film The Secret of the Grain. The subtleness of her acting pays tribute to the complexity of her character when her untamed and sensuous energy gives her the beautiful determination of those who have a dream.  See detailed PDF file:
Content Description & Film Interest for School Audiences
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