About this episode
Presented in Competition at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, “In a Whisper” marks a new chapter in Leyla Bouzid’s cinematic exploration of intimacy and inherited silence. The film follows Lilia as she returns home in Tunisia for her uncle’s funeral. Her family knows little about her life abroad, and nothing about the woman she loves. As relatives gather under one roof and old memories resurface, the film unfolds as both a family drama and a discreet investigation into the uncle’s sudden death.
“The film is about the untold, the taboos, the family secrets that are hidden,” Bouzid explains. “Even when unsaid, they resonate in everyone.” For the director, silence is never neutral; it reverberates, shaping relationships and misunderstandings across generations.
Silence as Inheritance
The film suggests that silence can be transmitted like a tradition. For Bouzid, breaking it is both a personal and political gesture. “At some point, things have to be said,” she notes. “Not saying them can make them worse. Everything is felt.” The director frames secrecy not only as a family dynamic but as a societal mechanism that regulates private life.
In Tunisia, homosexuality remains criminalised, and Bouzid approaches the topic without provocation, but with clarity. “People should have the freedom to love each other,” she states, insisting that private sexuality should not be policed by family or law. Yet the film avoids a binary opposition between individual freedom and collective belonging. Lilia does not reject her roots; rather, she negotiates her place within them.
Family, Bouzid stresses, remains the foundation of Tunisian society. “It’s not easy to reject everything,” she says, acknowledging the depth of generational transmission. “In a Whisper” therefore refuses rupture in favour of dialogue, suggesting that new forms of kinship can coexist within traditional frameworks.
The House as Living Organism
If family is central, the house becomes its embodiment. Bouzid describes the location as the film’s “main character.” The grandmother, the matriarch, is inseparable from this space, occupying its corners like a silent guardian of memory. Inside the house, time accumulates in layers: childhood recollections, old photographs, inherited gestures.
