This project proposes an in-depth study of Tunisian animation since 2000. Long considered a minor art of entertainment, animation cinema in Tunisia occupies a peripheral position that has allowed it, particularly under authoritarian regimes, to become a site of experimentation and dissent. From the mid-2000s onwards, the transformation of the media landscape through the Internet, satellite channels, and social networks has reconfigured its modes of production and circulation, while also integrating it into transregional aesthetic flows.

The research examines how Tunisian animation, as a marginal aesthetic and cultural practice, reveals social and political transformations and contributes to the construction of new narratives and transregional collective imaginaries. It approaches animation as a “total object”, a holistic phenomenon, by combining film analysis, the study of artists’ trajectories, and an examination of the modes of circulation and reception of works. The main expected outcome is a monograph on the history of Tunisian animation since 2000. The project will also result in scholarly outputs in the form of articles and conference presentations. More broadly, it contributes to debates on the relationship between art and power in the Arab world, on transregional and transnational circulations of expertise, aesthetic and ideological practices, and on writing grand history in the present from the margins.