French-Tunisian documentary maker Erige Sehiri makes a watchable fiction feature with this shrewd, sympathetic ensemble study, which takes place as promised in the title: over a single working day in a fig tree orchard in Kesra, north-western Tunisia. Every day a truck comes to pick up a crowd of people doing cash-in-hand work picking the fruit: largely women, young and old, and some men. The long working day unfolds as the shadows shorten, then lengthen and friendships, enmities, generational and political disputes and embryonic and failed love affairs are revealed to us.
The movie is largely improvised and Sehiri appears often to have set up specific situations for two or three characters to work around, so there are some slightly protracted, shapeless, acting-class improv conversations and arguments, and even some improv fighting; sometimes the film loses its narrative traction. But the loose style gives the film an easy and attractive swing and there are times when it looks very real: the moment when the dilapidated tailgate falls off the back of the truck was surely authentic.
