TUESDAY 7TH OCTOBER 2025 | 7PM | £10 ADV // £8 CONCS
What happens when silence becomes strategy?
Not just survival—but seduction, vengeance, and control.
The Sandpit Collective, in partnership with the University of Sussex, continues the Other Asias film programme with the third event in our ongoing cycle: Aswaat / Voices—a season dedicated to voice, resistance, and the politics of representation in postcolonial feminist cinema.
Following Feminism Inshallah and Nahla, we return this autumn, on Tuesday 7 October, under the light of the Hunter’s Moon—a full moon historically tied to ritual, reckoning, and release. On this charged night, we invite you to enter Black Medusa (2021)—a noir-drenched tale of feminist vengeance set in the shadowed streets of post-revolutionary Tunis.
By day, Nada is a silent content editor in a sterile office. By night, she becomes a calculating predator—luring men into intimate encounters before exacting brutal retribution. Across nine nights, Black Medusa unfolds like a fever dream: its stark black-and-white palette evokes both ancient myth and dystopian nightmare.
Nada’s muteness—mediated through a voice app—is neither submission nor lack. It is defence. It is provocation. Her silence resists translation, reclaims space, and turns the tools of technocapitalism into shields and weapons.
More than a revenge thriller, Black Medusa explores how silence can rupture patriarchal power. How trauma, technology, and myth converge in the figure of the femme fatale reimagined—not for the male gaze, but against it.
Shot in the wake of the Tunisian Jasmine revolution, the film holds the tension between transformation and disillusionment. Between the longing for change and the violence that lingers.
Black Medusa (Youssef Chebbi & Ismaël, Tunisia, 2021) | ~95 min
Languages: Arabic (Tunisian), French, and English with English subtitles
Sound design: Amal Attia
Doors: 7pm
Screening: 7:30pm
Join the Post-Screening DialogueStay for a critical conversation:
• How does Black Medusa disrupt expectations of female silence and violence?
• In what ways do narrative form and noir aesthetics amplify feminist critique?
• How can film empower suppressed voices in contexts of trauma and revolution?
Post-Screening: Dance the Pain Away
Move beyond the screen. Under the full glow of the Hunter’s Moon, we invite you into a space of ritual release. The Rose Hill transforms into a haven of rhythm, catharsis, and collective embodiment—featuring an all-Tunisian music set that channels ancestral pulse and post-revolutionary defiance.
Let the weight of the film move through you. Let your body answer back. Let the silence break—through sound, through dance, under the moon.