Tahani Rached

Biography

From her first feature film, Les voleurs de job (1980), Tahani Rached left her strong mark on our cinema. Noticed by Denys Arcand, he invited her to participate in the collective adventure of Comfort and Indifference (1981). She then moved to the NFB, where she directed several of the institution’s flagship films, dealing in turn with the Haitian condition, Palestinian survival, the Quebec hospital system, AIDS doctors, the fate of Egyptian women and an Outremont choir. Her most famous film to date remains Au chic resto Pop, which she dedicated in 1990 to a soup kitchen in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district. She filmed only testimonies in song, in collaboration with the composer-performer Steve Faulkner (known as Cassonade), thus accentuating a singular trait found in the majority of her films. This place left to the song as an expressive revelation of a critical aspect of the real situation that we want to capture. In 2006, the director returned to her native country where she made three films, Ces filles-là, a documentary selected by the Cannes Film Festival, Voisins and De longue haleine, which is dedicated to the Egyptian revolution as experienced by a local family.