The Secret of the Grain

The Secret of the Grain (La Graine et le Mulet, 2007) is a French-Tunisian drama you can watch online on iFILM, written and directed by Abdellatif Kechiche and starring Habib Boufares. It took the César for Best Film and the Venice Jury Prize — and most people outside France still haven't seen it.

Slimane Beiji is a dockworker in the port city of Sète, past sixty and one round of layoffs away from nothing. He has two families — the one from his marriage, now scattered, and his partner's daughter Rym, played with fierce energy by Hafsia Herzi — and one stubborn idea: open a floating restaurant and serve couscous with mullet the way his mother makes it. No money, no loan, no obvious path. Still, the plan takes shape, one conversation at a time.

Kechiche shot on real streets with a mix of professional and non-professional actors, holding scenes in long unbroken takes that feel less like cinema and more like eavesdropping on actual lives. The film runs nearly three hours and earns every minute. Stream The Secret of the Grain online on iFILM if you want something that treats ordinary ambition as worthy of that kind of attention.