Fatima (2015)

Fatima is a woman of Maghrebi origin who immigrated to France in her thirties with her husband. Several years later, she separated from him and continued raising their two daughters, Souad and Nesrine, while working as a housekeeper. Afraid that her daughters, aged 15 and 18, would follow the same disappointing, difficult, and unstable path she had lived through, she did everything she could to help them succeed in life. The two daughters, who grew up in France, speak French fluently—much better than their mother—and understand very little Arabic. Fatima struggled with this language barrier in society, as well as with the lack of communication within her own family. To cope with these difficulties, she wrote in her diary every day in her mother tongue. After being left paralyzed for a long time following a workplace accident, she decided to take up literacy studies and learn French properly, while also sharing her diaries with her young Arabic-speaking doctor.