Furthermore, the diversity of Tunisia’s landscape has made “Hollywood” choose Tunisia as the location for its movie blockbusters. Over 130 productions were filmed under Tunisian skies, from Roman Polanski’s “Pirates” and romantic drama “The English Patient” to Spielberg’s action film “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and pioneering comedy “Monty Python’s The Life of Brian”. Each movie has drawn on the country’s incredible diversity of landscapes from rugged peaks and golden deserts to valleys, salt lakes, powdery sands and historic cities: Tunisia has put them all in the picture, often in a starring role. Indeed, Georges Lucas chose Tunisia to shoot all episodes of “Star Wars” series only the last one was shot elsewhere. Today, many thousands of diehard Star Wars fans make the pilgrimage to Tunisia to visit all the film set locations in the country’s south. One of the latest movies filmed in Tunisia in 2011 was “Day of the Falcon”, also known as “Black Gold” and “Black Thirst”, featuring among others Antonio Banderas.

What have been the recent cultural exchanges between the two countries? Please talk us through them.

Dance groups and Sufi music groups from Tunisia participate regularly in Indian Festivals. Many Indian groups performed in our festivals as well including the renowned International Festival of Carthage. Recently we hosted a group from Manipur. Furthermore, five Tunisian handcrafters took part in this year’s Surajkund International Craft Mela. Their handicraft items caught the attention of the visiting public, and became a grand hit and even were bestowed an award. This gives us confidence to further explore cooperation in this area. I know it would take time to grow this business, but we will be working hard on it as we strongly believe that cultural exchanges will get our two great people closer.