TUNIS —
Actress Claudia Cardinale may have been a sixties legend of Italian and French
cinema, but in
Tunisia, in the portside district where she grew up, she says
she feels “at home”.
اضافة اعلان
“I left very
young, but I spent my whole childhood here, my adolescence,” said Cardinale,
now 84. “My origins are here.”
To celebrate her
connection to the
North African country, authorities on Sunday named a street
after her in the La Goulette suburb of the capital Tunis, where petals were
scattered in a ceremony in her honor.
“You marked the
world of cinema for almost half a century with your dazzling beauty, your
charisma and through the roles you played,” said Amel Limam, the mayor of La
Goulette.
“I am very
honored, because it is here that I was born and spent my childhood,” Cardinale
said. “I kiss you!”
The multicultural
beachfront neighborhood was once home to a sizeable Sicilian population —
including Cardinale’s parents.
Before Tunisia’s
independence from France in 1956, more than 130,000 Italians were resident, and
many of their ancestors had settled there before French colonial rule.
“I still keep a
lot of Tunisia inside me — the scenery, the people, sense of welcome, the
openness,” Cardinale told AFP.
‘We’re all equal’
In 1957, aged 19, Cardinale
won a beauty contest for “the prettiest Italian” in newly independent Tunisia.
Her prize was a
trip to the Venice film festival, where she caught the eye of influential
cinema figures.
That led to her
first film role, in Mario Monicelli’s Le Pigeon.
Soon afterwards,
she moved with her family to Rome to pursue her career, which took off with a
role in Luchino Visconti’s film The Leopard, alongside French film star Alain
Delon and Hollywood legend Burt Lancaster.
That was the start
of a long career that has continued into her 80s. After starring in The Pink
Panther opposite David Niven in 1963, she shot to attention in the
United States and Britain.
In one of her
latest roles, she plays a grandmother in a film by Tunisia’s Ridha Behi, “L’ile
du Pardon”, currently in post-production.
Her parents never
recovered from their departure from Tunisia, which they experienced as an
exile.
“It was very hard.
My father never wanted to come back, that’s how much he dreaded the pain of
what was for him a real heartbreak,” she said.
“My mother
recreated Tunisia in Italy. She planted all Tunisian plants and kept on cooking
Tunisian meals.”
But Cardinale said
the Tunisian sense of hospitality can be a model for how to treat migrants.
The country “can
and should be proud of its history,” she said.
And in an era when
many Tunisians are willing to risk their lives boarding unseaworthy boats to
reach
Europe, she stresses the importance of “remembering this shared past to
build the future”.
“The wind changes,
and we’re all equal in terms of the need to leave,” she said.
“Tunisia for us was a
welcoming land. I wish everyone in the world who needs to leave somewhere could
receive the same welcome.”
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