Looking on the bright side of life: Tunisia tries to encourage more movie fan tourists

The north African country was the backdrop for famous films such as ‘Life of Brian’, ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ and ‘The English Patient’. Now Tunisia wants to encourage tourists to see the locations for themselves, reports Simon Speakman Cordall from Tunis

Michael Palin as Pontius Pilate in ‘Life of Brian’ (Moviestore/Shutterstock)

It’s not clear if the Tunisian government knew what they were getting into when they opened up some of their prime locations to the Monty Python film crew.

Franco Zeffirelli had recently completed shooting the prestigious Jesus of Nazareth at the coastal town of Monastir. There was little reason to suppose that the Python film, Life of Brian, using many of the same crew and locations, would be radically different. That the principal Tunisian producer, Tarek Ben Ammar, was the nephew of the country’s president, also likely didn’t hurt.

However, any assumption that the film’s release would go unnoticed proved somewhat misjudged. In cities across the US and UK, angry crowds protested against a film that many hadn’t even watched, declaring it an insult to their religion and their messiah, naughty boy or not.