Feverish colors, muted tones, and corroded surfaces immediately evoke the suffocating aura of systemic corruption haunting Mehdi Hmili’s nightmarish thriller. Its aesthetic and thematic weight both carry, but at times also stifle the Tunisian director’s vision of moral rot that goes right to the bone. These bones are Mohamed’s (a gloomy Ghanem Zrelli), a former steelworker in a brutal factory who clings to a post as nightwatchman after an explosion claims the life of his friend Abdel and leaves Mohamed with a metal shard lodged in his skull. As the immovable splinter festers in his head like a fixed idea, his behavior and objective slowly change.
Rust spreads through his body, and the doomed protagonist becomes an avenging force for those devoured by the factory. Heat, iron, and fire turn this monstrous metal structure both into a bestial allegory of an inhuman system that consumes the people who drudge for it, and a mundane vision of hell. This working-class inferno seems only to wait for its wealthy and powerful creators to be fed to the flames they fawn. While it becomes clear early on that Mohamed will bring them to justice, his hatred and violence come with a price: the loss of the humanity that made him care for Abdel and his young widow (Maram Ben Aziza).
Around him orbit figures whose lives are equally warped by the blast: a spectral elder (Slim Baccar) and fellow survivors (Younes Ferhi, Mohamed Kolsi, Mourad Gharsalli) who navigate the fine line between survival, subversion, surrender. Within this world of spectral symbolism, the metal piece becomes a sinister analogy for constant pain growing into a wrath that ultimately poisons his whole persona. Clearly inspired by Shinya Tsukamoto‘s cult midnight movie Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Hmili forges a vision as raw as the corroded steel it depicts. The camera lingers on surfaces bruised by industry, which stand in for broken bodies and minds. Abdel’s widow recounts how the accident left nothing of his body.
It is as if the dead became part of the machinery they kept going. Even the smallest cogs are part of the machinery. That is the cruel irony of this unforgiving parable. Distinctive visual design of rough-hewn shapes and corroded colors intertwines a ferocious systemic critique with phantasmagoric undertones. Farouk Laaridh’s cinematography is all ochres, charcoals, and blood-browns, signifying the dirtiness of indifferent institutions and brutal bureaucracy. Oppressive interiors reveal peeling paint and blistered surfaces under a bleak artificial light. This destroyed industrial design mirrors the protagonist’s psychological erosion as much as the social decay entrapping him. Mohamed’s gruesome metamorphosis happens without stark make-up or special effects.
Stains on his skin are one of the few indicators of the oxidized vengeance inside him. By the time Mohamed embraces his fate, he himself has become a product of the inhumane power structures he aims to destroy. Hmili effectively pairs well-worn tropes with fresh ideas and treats both with such mythic conviction that they become more than generic gestures. Like the Nietzsche quote over the opening credits, Exile is hardly new, but it echoes nevertheless.
- OT: Exile
- Director: Mehdi Hmili
- Year: 2025
