Teenage years
First experiments
Began making experimental short films, testing cinema as a language of fragments, rhythm, and encounter.
Biography
Marwen
El Hechkel
A practice shaped in the editing room, moving between experimental form, rural memory, care, rupture, and socially engaged cinema.
The Practice
A life cut through rhythm, attention, and rupture.
Marwen El Hechkel is a Tunisian filmmaker, producer, and editor whose practice comes from the editing room: a cinema built through rhythm, observation, and the tension between care and rupture.
He began making experimental short films as a teenager and has worked as a senior editor since graduating from ISAMM in 2013.
His editing work spans documentary features, docudrama, fiction shorts, documentary series, music videos, and commercials, carrying a precise attention to duration, silence, and the emotional architecture of montage.
Through Arissa Tales, his work moves through rural life, migration, grief, and care, building films through restraint, witness, and the fragile relationship between people and the frame.
He has trained and taught with TACIR, DW, Alkhatt, MediaHub, and three universities, including workshops in marginalized regions, extending cinema practice beyond production into transmission and shared formation.
Formation
Chronology without ornament.
2013
ISAMM formation
Graduated from ISAMM and continued developing an editing-led practice across documentary and fiction forms.
Editing room
Senior editor practice
Worked across documentary features, docudrama, fiction shorts, documentary series, music videos, and commercials.
Arissa Tales
Production structure
Leads a production company in Mahdia for experimental and socially engaged films rooted in memory, witness, and place.
Training
Cinema as transmission
Taught and trained with TACIR, DW, Alkhatt, MediaHub, and universities, including workshops in marginalized regions.
Work Fields
Direction, montage, transmission.
Direction
Films built through observation, restraint, rural life, migration, grief, care, and the material presence of people inside the frame.
Editing
A montage practice concerned with rhythm, silence, fracture, and the precise emotional pressure of duration.
Education
Workshops, training, and cinema practice shared across institutions, collectives, and marginalized regions.
Recognition
This Is My Heaven
received the Doc House Prize, the Al Jazeera Documentary Days Prize, and the IFT Prize at JCC Takmil.
Doc House Prize
Al Jazeera Documentary Days Prize
IFT Prize at JCC Takmil
Return To The Work