CREDITS NON-CONTRACTUAL INTERVIEW with LEYLA BOUZID
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CREDITS NON-CONTRACTUAL INTERVIEW with LEYLA BOUZID The film takes place when Ben Ali was The revolution (or revolts, points of view President, but was written and shot a are divergent) surprised the entire world, long time after he fled the country. How but it didn’t come from nowhere. We has your work changed in relation to couldn’t just all of a sudden sweep away the historical and key events that have decades of dictatorship and turn towards recently occurred in Tunisia? the future without examining the past. For me it was obvious that we had to quickly When the revolution happened, the desire review the past while the tide of freedom was very strong to film and represent it. continued to flow. Many documentaries were shot then, all Like most Tunisians, my euphoria full of hope, all focused on the future. I, too, was strong at first, followed by really wanted to film. Not the revolution, successive phases of enchantment and but what everyone had lived through disenchantment. For the film, I didn’t want and been subjected to: the suffocating the range of emotions linked to ongoing everyday life, the total power of the police, events to influence me. My only guide was the surveillance, the fear and paranoia of trying to consistently follow the emotional the Tunisian people over the past 23 years. journey traveled by the characters during the historical period being told. The goal under Ben Ali. When I told the extras: “here was to be as accurate as possible in a there’s a heavy silence” because under work of fiction anchored in a specific Ben Ali one couldn’t hear such things historical context. without being afraid, some of them had a hard time trying to recompose the feeling. Were you aware of the renewed People had lost the reflexes they had had restrictions on freedom during the shoot? during that period, along with the memory Were you afraid of seeing the Ben Ali of the fear and paranoia. From a certain era come back to life in the eye of your standpoint, forgetting is not necessarily camera? a bad thing. As if that period was really behind us. But amnesia and forgetting must I was above all aware that I had to shoot be fought. That’s one of the roles of cinema. the film quickly, while there was still time, and that it was important to film the fear You speak of fears in relation to the police the Tunisians felt when Ben Ali was in system, but there is also a real terrorist power. To memorize the difficulties of threat looming over Tunisia. And yet those years that we never wanted to see religion is completely absent from the film. again, to conjure away the risk of seeing them come racing back. We’re with young people who bubble over During the shoot I noticed that many had with energy, who do things, who want to already forgotten what it was like to live make music, organize concerts, live their art. Religion is not in the center of their The film asks this question: how can one, lives. It’s this energetic and creative youth in Tunisia, break free from family, from who I wanted to film. Youth who fight society, from the system? -- the energy everyday for their existence even, and that this requires, the resistance that who we rarely hear anything about. The it provokes and the violence that it can only young people given a voice in the generate are tremendous. We follow the media are those who turn to extremism trajectory of Farah, who wants to live life and violence. It seemed important to me to to the fullest, who is fully alive, against say that there are also young people who all odds and everyone, and for that she is are driven by life, to give them a voice via punished, crushed. Farah, show that she is muzzled by a terror I think that in Tunisia, we all pay a price, that emanates from the system. Terrorism whether one is an artist or not, at one time is not the only form of terror. or another in one’s life, at an intimate, familial, social or educational level. Farah is trying to exist as an individual, In Tunisian society, either one makes to have her voice heard. We know concessions, or one is confronted with “The Tunisian people”, the “We”, the countless obstacles. “Nation”… But what place is given to The story of the film is not autobiographical, “I”? At what price does one exist as a free even if there are a few situations that I individual in Tunisia? Did you have to pay myself lived through: that of discovering that price? What is there of you in Farah? that a close friend, who belonged to the same cinema club as I, was a police her to play the part of a singer’s mother. At informer. Someone who was there to first she was almost offended. But finally watch us, to infiltrate us. That was a when she read the script, she was very terrible shock; I realized then to what enthusiastic. In the character of Hayet she extent we were encircled and that we saw things that reminded her of her own couldn’t trust anything or anyone. mother, and was excited to play the role. But Farah is very different from me. She Ghalia’s presence brought a lot to the film: is more impulsive and spontaneous than I she was a great help to Baya. They bonded am, I would never have been capable of beautifully together and developed a going as far as she does. She is graced rhythm of their own. by a kind of innocence and courage, she The last scene in the film is in fact inspired hasn’t integrated the limits that block any by the first meeting of the two actresses. initiative; she’s like a free electron. Ghalia sang to encourage Baya to sing in her presence. Little by little, Baya started You chose the singer Ghalia Ben Ali to singing with Ghalia. This touched Ghalia play the role of the mother, and gave so that tears started running down her Baya Medhaffer her first role, that of the cheeks while she smiled. It was very heroine. How did the two actresses react intense and suddenly, it was obvious that to this choice? this was the end of the film. To play the part of Farah, I needed a Ghalia was very surprised that I contacted young girl of 18, very free, ready and able to embody the role, which required mining area, where the dusty decors both singing and playing. It’s a tough break from the turbulent urban setting. part for a novice. The casting lasted over a year, I met many, many girls, There’s a barrier that separates these some of them many times. Baya took the two settings that I feel must be broken, screen test early on, but I wasn’t sure, and that it’s possible for me to do it. I was riddled with doubt. The choice Concretely, during the shoot, it’s the scene was difficult and Baya really fought to where Hayet enters the bar that was the get the role. She absolutely wanted it; most delicate. The extras were real clients she loved the character and was not of a seedy bar. Each time we redid the afraid of being censored or of doing scene, the actress had to enter the bar something forbidden. She is, in fact, again and each time it was an ordeal. The more free than Farah, more explosive. men, extras that they were, ogled her with She is exceptionally free. This was very insistence, quasi-obscenely, without our precious for embodying the role and it’s asking. All the women participating in the what convinced me. shoot felt the pressure of their look. I was determined to film Tunisian places You film the rough areas of Tunis, its with their real atmospheres, the real nightlife, and namely the bars, the trains, persons who work or go there, to be very masculine places, which you enter faithful to their reality. The suburban with the eyes of a woman… Then you train, the bars, the bus station are filmed go into the country, and primarily to the in documentary fashion. The idea was protestors since it fights and arrests them to inject the fiction of the film into these for what they cry out in their songs. terribly alive, teeming places of the city… The music was the biggest challenge right up to the dusty phosphate mines, the of the film. Not only did I have to find an hotbed of resistance when Ben Ali was in actress who sings, but I needed to create power. The workers play their proper role. a band, compose the music, write the This scene creates a break in the film, songs. Sometimes I thought it would be allowing for taking a step back in relation impossible. I met countless musicians, but to the story, a kind of zoom backwards that we never succeeded in getting along. attempts to draw a map of the country. To And then one day by chance I was at remember that the words of the songs a concert in Paris and I discovered a come from afar, that the impression band whose music simply took me away: of suffocating is deep, buried beneath the Alif Ensemble.