By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 30, 2015)

While this qualifies as a “mockumentary”, there’s nothing “ha-ha” funny about it. That is, unless you consider sexual violence an amusing subject… which it decidedly is not, although (sadly) it is a global scourge that knows no borders.

This is precisely the point that writer-director Kaouther Ben Hania is (bravely) making in her film, which is a scathing feminist send-up of the systemic sexism that permeates not only her native Tunisia, but Arab culture (and the Earth).

The “Challat” refers to a motorbike-borne, self-anointed crusader who slashes the buttocks of women who dress “immodestly”. As the film opens, a decade has passed since this twisted customer has victimized anyone. An investigative journalist (played by the director) is trying to track him down, so she can get inside his head to see what makes such an odious individual tick. A young man comes forth, who may or may not be the elusive “Challat”. She calls his bluff, and things get interesting.

Thought-provoking, yet also disheartening when you contemplate the distressing universality of the misogynist credo: “She was asking for it.”