Conceived by filmmaker Tahar Cheriaa and officially launched in 1966 by the Tunisian Minister of Culture, Chedli Klibi, this event, the first of its kind in the Arab world, was primarily conceived to highlight sub-Saharan African and Arab cinema, creating bridges of dialogue between North and South and offering a meeting between regional filmmakers and moviegoers.

The festival's social dimension is reflected in several GoldenTanit award-winning films such as the Making Of (2006) by Nouri Bouzid, featuring Bahta, a 25-year-old unemployed amateur break dancer recruited by extremists to commit a suicide attack.

Twelve Arab and African films reflect the renewal of cinematographic expression and present original works singular in their aesthetic and their statements.

Carthage Ciné-Foundation: This international selection of twelve school films embodies the diversity of young artists and announces the trends of the future of world cinema.

Parallel sections New Territories This program aims to be a window on recent suggested films, the most innovative and subversive, the most radical and marginal, in a word, on new aesthetic and political experiences, far from any commercial format, media, or festival.

It seeks to submit the continually renewed ability of cinema to house within it both the issues of its time, the questions of those who make it and their contemporaries as well as the shifting of its artistic, formal, and technological expression.

In 2015 ten cities hosted the festival: Jendouba, Sfax, Mahdia, Tataouine, Nabeul, Béja, Kef, Kairouan, Gafsa and Monastir.