In Chronicles of a Vagabond, Elyes Jeridi reconsiders the contemporary serial form through a cinematic dispositif grounded in movement and initiatory wandering. The film unfolds like an archaic narrative, beginning with a departure. A prologue gives way to six brief episodes, conceived as pauses or intervals along a continuum. Nothing comes to a halt; the work unfolds in relation to movement, voice, and the subtle resonance of images.
Drawing from diverse sources : everyday life, digital media and found footage, the film situates memory, narrative, and perception in dialogue, creating a fragile, immersive meditation on time, presence, and storytelling. Over this image track unfolds a voice-over that operates simultaneously as a narrative instance and a space for reflection. Spoken by the filmmaker, it adopts the position of the storyteller, a voice that observes, hesitates, and interrogates reality, engaging political, existential, and temporal questions.
Two figures emerge along the trajectory: a donkey and a penguin. Silent presences, framed as allegorical characters, they accompany the narrator within the shot and across duration. Like animal figures in fables and tales, they function as symbolic mediators. Through their presence, the intimate expands into the universal, and the personal takes on the shape of narrative.
Chronicles of a Vagabond asserts itself as a conceptual work that probes cinematic form while exploring memory and temporality, allowing images and words to engage in a continuous dialogue. At once fragile and shifting, the film unfolds as a contemporary fable, deeply alive, tracing the path of a man who moves forward, speaks, and resists.
Text by Nicene Kossentini
About the Artist
Born 1992. Sousse, Tunisia
Lives and works in Tunis, Tunisia
Elyes Jeridi is a Tunisian visual artist and researcher whose practice focuses on film essay,
experimental cinema and authorial documentary. He holds degrees in English Literature and Civilization from the University of Sousse, in Film Directing from ISAMM in Tunis, and a Master's degree in Film Studies from the University of Caen Normandy. His work develops a conceptual approach that questions contemporary forms of narration, representation, and memory.
Through his works, he explores the relationships between intimate experience and collective issues, between individual memory and shared history, reflecting on notions of time, speech, and persistence. Wandering and the figure of the storyteller run through his practice as structuring motifs, transforming each project into a space of displacement, listening, and resistance. His short film Fabula received the Serge Daney Prize in Paris, a Special Mention at the Khouribga African Cinema Festival, and a nomination at the La Première Fois Festival in Marseille.
Alongside his artistic practice, Elyes Jeridi teaches theories of film editing and is pursuing a PhD in film aesthetics, extending his reflection at the intersection of artistic creation and critical thought.
About the Curator
Born 1976. Sfax, Tunisia
Lives and works Tunis, Tunisia and Paris, France
The work of Nicène Kossentini is an invitation to experience a symbiosis with a space of life that is both close and uncertain. Playing with black and white contrasts and zones of semi-visibility, Kossentini creates singular and minimalist environments. Her photographs and videos track the traces of sites and surfaces on the verge of disappearance, hypnotizing the spectator to look ahead to an imminent event. Her videos, photographs, sculptures, works on paper and paintings question current events in the world. In this perspective, she always shifts towards the search for aesthetics, beauty, and poetry in order to confront cold violence. Kossentini's research area draws its resources from her family history, intimate and intergenerational tradition of storytelling, as well as Arabic poetry, literature and philosophy.
Kossentini graduated with a degree in Applied Arts from the Fine Art Institute of Tunis, Tunisia and pursued Advanced Studies in Art from Marc Bloch University, Strasburg, France. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Experimental Cinema at the University of Tunis, Tunisia.
