Die Welt Trailer (2013)

Trailer for Die Welt.

In his adventurous and smart debut feature, director Alex Pitstra announces himself as a neo-Tarantino; or to be more precise, the director's stand-in in the film (played by affable newcomer Abdelhamid Naouara) is a Tarantinoesque, head-strong twentysomething working in a video store. But the parallel with the more senior filmmaker does not end with character homage, Pitstra also employs a full arsenal of well-honed cinematic techniques and references to explore a life that he imagines he could have lived. Born of a Dutch mother and an absent Tunisian father, the director sets his story in a post-Jasmine Revolution Tunisia. He follows the young Abdallah as he dreams of leaving behind the video store and his conservative surroundings for the alluring promise of Europe. Based loosely on his own father's story of coming to Holland with a Dutch woman, (even casting him as the father in the film), Pitstra's semi-autobriographical voyage of discovery is set against the back drop of a contemporary, yet still very traditional Tunisia which itself is trying to find a way forward in the world.