On a hot summer day, a crew of workers arrive at dawn at a picturesque fig orchard in northwestern Tunisia. The film allows viewers to eavesdrop on their conversations among the sun-dappled leaves of the fig trees, and young women find idle moments outside the watchful gaze of their foreman. The workers joke, argue, debate, gossip, flirt, all the while painting an unhurried but riveting portrait of everyday life in rural society, where issues of class and gender as well as economic and political circumstances often don't allow for such personal freedoms. Set over the course of a single day, and with a cast made up of an intergenerational ensemble of non-professional actors, Under the Fig Trees reveals the ways in which sisterhood becomes an act of resistance.