Férid Boughedir was born in 1944 in Tunis. In addition to being one of the most prominent Tunisian filmmakers, he is also a film critic, writer and historian. He started his feature film career with two documentaries about the new cinema of Africa and the Arab world: Caméra d’Afrique (1983) and Caméra Arabe (1987), both of which were presented in the Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival. His first fictional work, Halfaouine: Boy of the Terraces (1990) received tremendous public and critical acclaim, and it remains to this day the biggest success in Tunisian cinema. His 1996 film A Summer in La Goulette was screened at numerous prestigious film festivals around the world. A member of the official juries of the Cannes Film Festival (1991), the Berlinale (1997) and the Venice Film Festival (1990), Boughedir helmed the 14th edition of the Carthage Film Festival. He teaches film at the University of Tunis.