Larger-than-life characters populate director Nejib Belkadhi’s spellbinding combination of film noir and magic realism, which follows a downtrodden orphan — now grown but still saddled with a cruel nickname — who has a reversal of fortune and takes on the thugs who control his ghetto.

Mohsen (Abdel Moneem Chouayat), has always lived with the stigma of being a bastard and saddled with the nickname Bastardo, but when a GSM relay is installed on his roof, he has a reversal of fortune. As his power grows, he has to wrest control over his poor neighbourhood from Larnouba (Chedly Arfaoui), the unscrupulous local mobster — and, in the process, slips into the dark world of power.