ABSTRACT
In 2005, in a jam-packed cinema in Tunis, I saw the Dutch movie Simon (2004) by Eddy Terstall. The movie was part of a film festival organised by the European embassies, at which each country showcased their best movie from the past year. Terstall was present at the screening, and introduced the film in fluent Arabic and French. He warned the audience that the film – which is about the universal themes of friendship, love and death – may appear rather exotic to many of the Arabic and European audience members, as in Simon these topics are explored within the city boundaries of a liberal Amsterdam, where there is a tolerant attitude to sexuality and soft drugs, gay marriage is a commonly accepted fact and assisted dying is a legal option enabling someone who is facing the prospect of unbearable suffering to terminate their life in a dignified way. It just so happened that the Spanish offering at the same festival was the movie The Sea Inside (Mar Adentro, dir. Alejandro Amenabar, 2004), based on the true story of a quadriplegic who loses his battle with the Spanish legal system and the Catholic church for the right to terminate his life.
