What is Tunisian cinema? Or, what do we understand by 'Tunisian' cinema? Would it be simply the totality of films produced since the country's independence by directors of Tunisian nationality, in Tunisian studios with Tunisian crews and budgets? Or all films shot in Tunisia? These criteria, which are national' at least in the sense of juridical and financial nationality', are generally appropriate in respect of the 60 or so films which can be considered as constituting a corpus of contemporary (that is, post-¬independence) Tunisian cinematography. The considerations which I shall develop here revolve around a central question, that of understanding what is signified by 'Tunisian', or tunisianité, and are intended as an attempt to read, through the diverse marquetry of cultural production represented by these films, the various meanings which they give to the 'nationality' they apparently share.