In the Gardens of Carthage, a district of Tunis initiated by the former Regime whose construction stopped at the beginning of the Revolution, two cops, Fatma and Batal, find a burnt body in one of the lots. As construction slowly resumes, they start looking into this mysterious case. When the event repeats itself, the investigation takes a puzzling turn.

The burnt body of a caretaker is found on a construction site of a high-rise building, where the work has stopped temporarily and is about to be resumed. A young female detective, Fatma, and a middle-aged detective, Batal, investigate the case, but figuring out its true nature is not easy. Amid this, the developers want to restart the construction, while those in the upper echelons of power insist on covering up the case. However, the situation gets out of hand as similar incidents keep occurring. Although Ashkal is a mystery thriller tracing a chain of self-destruction cases on the surface, it ultimately has political connotations regarding the recent history of Tunisia. Given that the self-immolation of a street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, became a catalyst for the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, we can understand this self-annihilation case in the film was severe. The repeated appearance of the hideous construction site signifies a stagnant revolution and becomes a way to reveal the futility of the logic of development. (MOON Seok)