Sky World news/Saudi Arabia, a new El Dorado for Tunisian cinema technicians
Faced with the boom in the audiovisual sector in Saudi Arabia, more and more Tunisians are traveling to work on film sets there. A qualified workforce, increasingly in demand, who does not necessarily wish to leave the country to migrate to this new Eldorado, but rather to keep one foot between the two .
The Saudi Film Commission, a branch of the Ministry of Culture created in 2020, offers tax reductions for productions filmed in the country: production costs are reimbursed up to 40% if filming is carried out on location. For Tunisian technicians, these new work opportunities came at the right time: the pandemic has paralyzed part of the sector in Tunisia.
The status of audiovisual technician is also very precarious, many have no safety net to bounce back from economic difficulties.
Tunisian technicians recognized for the quality of their training
This migration of a new kind, temporary and highly qualified, is not new in the audiovisual world. “The country has always been a breeding ground for Arab countries who have recruited technicians there because of the quality of their training, because the teachers of the cinema schools are themselves from the sector and have had a lot of experience in the field. 'stranger. Tunisians worked for a time on filming in Syria and Lebanon, then in Qatar with the arrival of satellite channels, in Algeria in the 2000s and finally in Saudi Arabia.
