Kahéna Attia
No birth date available.
Kahéna Attia (sometimes also credited as Attia-Reveill) is a Tunisian editor who began her career as an assistant editor in 1971 and has twenty-five credits. Her first is for Ousmane Sembene’s Camp de Thiaroye; she also edited his Faat-Kine. Attia won best editing awards at the National Film Festival of Tangier for Rachid El Ouali’s Ymma and at FESPACO for Nadia Fares’ Honey and Ashes. She also edited Mohamed Challouf’s Tahar Cherera—In the Shadow of the Baobab, a documentary about the father of pan-cinematic Pan-Africanism and founder in 1966 of Carthage Film Days, the first film festival in Africa and the Arab World.
“For Guimba, I tried to show things from the point of view of an African woman. Cheick [Oumar Sissoko] allowed me to use all of the creativity I could bring and in this he was very respectful of my input; women can challenge State tyranny by means of seduction, an aspect that contributes to the film’s originality. The writing itself allows this aspect to be strengthened in a film directed by a man.”
—Interview with Kahena Attia at FESPACO in 1997 by Olivier Barlet. The full interview (in French) can be found in the Appendix.
