Foyer is a film resulting from experiments in filming with a sheet of white paper placed in front of the camera, a few centimetres from the lens. The intuition behind it, very simple at first, was to take the camera onto the streets of Tunis and observe the way that this dividing element taints itself with the surrounding light, vibrates according to the movements of the air, darkens with the passage of a cloud or when a person or object gets too close…

This experiment shifted when passers-by, attracted by this device, approached me to question me and talk, Bahri says. I then understood that these words and voices filled this blank paper both with poetic and political content, as subtle as it was unexpected. The film appeared somewhat in the way a roll of film is impressed by light when exposed to it: it was progressively affected by what happened to it, the environment in which it was shot. Like the fire around which we gather, the cinema screen becomes the foyer where varying projections meet, but also a place of divergence amongst this community of onlookers. (Ismaïl Bahri)