1 Why Did You Choose to Film in Ethiopia? What Connection Do You Have with That Country?

INTERVIEW DIRECTORS

1° WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO FILM IN ETHIOPIA? WHAT CONNECTION DO YOU HAVE WITH THAT COUNTRY?

The initial inspiration behind setting our story in Ethiopia derived from previous work experience on Ethiopian-American director Hailé Gérima’s film “Téza”. It was the first time we felt a nascent desire to make a movie. The earth, the road, the spiritual journey, and further exploration echoed in our minds. Bonds that had developed with producers Meseret Argaw, Daniel Taye Workou and local craftspeople that we had collaborated with on “Téza” coupled with continued travels led us back to the Horn of Africa. It was through these connections- to the people, the experience and the land that we were inspired to return to Ethiopia.

2° EFO IS YOUR FIRST FILM. HOW DO YOU MOVE FROM ART DIRECTION TO FILM DIRECTION? AND HOW DID YOU CHOOSE TO WORK ON THE SCENERY?

In both art direction and film direction, the desire to create stems from the same source. When working with Tsaï Ming-Liang (Visage) and Chantal Akerman (La Folie Almayer), we were given a unique opportrunity in which we listened and observed. They helped us focus our attention on the notion of fragility and humility. We decided not to use set constructions for our project, but rather we wished to highlight the natural landscape of the earth. Ethiopia in its authenticity is the set, it is rich and original. It unleashes imagination.

3° IF YOU COULD SUMMARIZE THE MOVIE IN A SINGLE WORD, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Shatter.

4° WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO DEAL WITH THE THEMES OF EXILE AND MIGRATION?

We show an exile made of flesh and blood, of hope and rage; a deaf rage. Our approach follows the silent cartography of a human being who has been made mute by modesty and shame, yet retains an internalized and repressed rage within. Some people may think that portrayng exile in this passive form is soft, but we think there are as many ways to preserve the dignity of those who suffer the consequences of migration. By taking a closer look at these topics, we hope to invert indifference.

5° WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO MAKE THAT MOVIE?

The reality of modern exile fans the flame in which everybody’s internal void is reflected like the blood of a shadow that has spread across the dregs of society.

6° COULD YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR MAIN CHARACTER AND HIS EVOLUTION? WHO IS ADISU?

Our main character, Adisu, is based off a man we met while filming ”Téza,” who lived in Adis Abeba. He was the kitchen aid in the hotel where the film crew was staying in Gorgora*. Every morning, we would leave the hotel to go shoot, and he would follow. He always sat alone in the car parking lot in his car. Over time, has he developed a relationship witht the staff is presence became more obvius. He told us the details of his mysterious life, which began to fill the pages of our notebooks. We collaborated together, searching for ways to embody his character. Then, he suddenly disappeared, lured by curiosity back towards the country and away from our film set.

We then met the acquaintance of Abebe Efrem Wale who would later play Adisu. With him we decided to create a fictional story of a young carefree fisherman, Adisu, and the hellish night that thrusted forced him into exile. We decided to broaden the space of his life and stretch it on sixty years. We see three different moments of his life: childhood, entrance into adulthood, and old age. On the road, Adisu becomes the image of a universal exile forced to wandering against his will. He flees from war (the same war that still lies dormant nowadays between Ethiopia and Eritrea), and finishes in Northern Europe. Memory works as the bridge between time and place. He embodies the life of yesterday and of today. As an old man in his cab, he’s the purveyor of history. He shows how life is rich of with encounters that need to be developed. For this reason, Adisu is intended to be a familiar character that our audience can identify with. * A small village located on the banks of Lake Tana in the north-west of Addis Abeba

7° THE GRANDFATHER IS ANOTHER IMPORTANT CHARACTER IN ADI’S MEMORIES. WHAT DOES HE EMBODY?

The grandfather role helps represents childhood’s carefreeness. In the movie, the grandfather serves as a living form of communication. His dialog with Adisu, in regards to stone throwing and the birds, also serves as a link to the firts imagines witnessed in the film.

8° WOMEN ARE ALSO PROMINENT IN ADISU’S HEART. SEVERAL WOMEN APPEAR IN THE MOVIE. WHAT DO THEY REPRESENT?

As in everyday life, women represent both the dream and reality. They portray the compassion and strength that drives communities. The film depicts three female characters. The first one dies in the first minutes. However she continues to live vividly in the main character’s eyes. The second character embodies the reality of war and the distress it subsequently causes. She also however shows selflessness and strength. Despite her pain, that woman still has the strength to give hope to a more unfortunate person. The third woman enables words to occur in the movie. She provides a genuine voice, both of the two other women as well as the taxi driver’s. She reveals the fractures she silently suffers. We think that women can provide something that men cannot in this way. That’s the reason for their presence in the film.

9° HOW DID YOU CHOOSE THE ACTORS? SOME ARE PROFESSION ALS WHILE OTHERS ARE NON-PROFESSIONALS. CAN YOU EXPLAIN HOW YOU DIRECTED THEM AND WHY YOU MADE THAT CHOICE?

In Ethiopia, where the heart of the movie was filmed, we relied on what the country provided in terms of actors. We obtained priceless interactions between the inhabitants and craftspeople in a village in Gorgora that we tried to capture and recreate on film as well. Nevertheless, some scenes turned out to be more complicated than others. The sequence in which Adisu pushes stones into his mouth, in order to silence his pain and try to curb the growing emptiness inside him, wasn’t easy for our character to recreate. We asked that the stones should be cleaned carefully, and we asked that the staff to not look at him during the scene. Hygiene and caution remain strong Ethiopian cultural values. However, for Abebe, the scene was not easy for him to act in. The gesture didn’t remind him of any actual experience. It wasn’t embarrassment, but rather a problem of showing signs of such great weakness.The echo of the screams he had to let out was even louder in the presences of silence. It took a long time to gain that kind of trust, we had to work together, side by side, down on our knees, grabbing the same stones, going through the same motions. Eventually, he was able to let his guard down. For Abebe, the pain was fictional, but finding the strength to shout out of disgust and fear in front of a camera, and find the inner ways towards a common pain took time. We granted him the time he needed, which we believe gives the film its primal narrative strength. Abebe wasn’t aware of the work we expected from him but he put his trust in us, which was the greatest gift in exchange.

We also met the character of the taxi driver by chance. The role was already written and we were looking for a man who would look like Abebe. Fate brought us luck and we met Joseph Farroul. We were cycling while he was driving his cab! We told him the story of an undeclared, faceless war. A war that nobody wishes to experience. Joseph replied it wouldn’t be hard for him to act that part. However, in order to do so, he needed to allows pains from his past to both resurface and be resolved. He needed time to write to his sister in Haitï, who had lost contact with after an argument. And had been on tense terms for 50 years, the two struggled to bury the hatchet. His personnel story join our fiction. The mood to work together was sealed.

We choose Sara de Roo by the dialog we had written in between these two characters. The long monologue in the middle of a movie that is based on silence is a crucial scene. This scene allowed for us to expand the perception of the movie, to not confine the movie to one sole angle of perception. Sara De Roo is an profound actress: she absorbs the essence of each word in her flesh. For the taxi company, we wanted to show the relationship between the employee and his boss. It mingles subordination and threats. That bad character benefited from the spontaneity and humanity that was developed by Philippe Jeusette. He’s played the role of the shady bosses taking advantage of a flawed system.

10° WATER SEEMS TO PLAY AN IMPORTANT ROLE FOR ADI. COULD YOU EXPLAIN WHAT IT SYMBOLIZES IN THE FILM?

The film is based on a few simple components: stones, back roads, a couple of fish, birds and water. This simplicity guided our writing. From the beginning, we wanted to face the notion of poverty and we decided to turn the harsh circumstances into a creative force. In Europe, the script takes place in the a undefined port city. We decided to shoot in the area around Meuse river. In the movie, the river is a link the taxi driver constantly maintains with his distant past. The water flow perpetuates motion. Water also plays a role in the movie because of its absence. Young Adisu walks in the dried bed of streaming waters several times. During the wet season the whole counts is green and full of flowers, but in the film, those dried paths erode away as he journeys and sinks into oblivion.

11° IT’S OBVIOUS YOU TOOK YOUR TIME TO CHOOSE THE FRAME AND TO THINK ABOUT THE SHOTS AND THE LIGHT. THERE’S A REAL CONCERN FOR AESTHETICS IN THE MOVIE. HOW DID YOU WORK WITH THE DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY?

There were two directors of photography. While imagining the scenes in Ethiopia, two major elements influenced our decisions: the character’s displacement and subsequent technical constraints. On that basis, we focused on how to address the movements. We started to plan the shots. When we arrived on scene, we decided to place the camera according to the position of the sun. In Ethiopia, the working days started very early. It was magical to be ready to start working at five o’clock in the morning. Being back in Europe didn’t mean we had plenty of technical means. Not at all. In the empty flat, the narrow frame constituted by the windows that overlooked the river or the windows of the taxi (two intimate elements that were part of the scenario) influenced our choices of camera positioning. In the end, the wealth of imagination, deployed to use the light and the special attention given to each frame, fills the film with shades and lights that act as a bright fire that provides clarity to the whole story.

12° THE FILM WAVERS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, DEPENDING ON ADI’S MEMORIES. THE IDEA OF SPACE AND CONFINEMENT IS ILLUSTRATED. COULD YOU EXPLAIN WHY YOU WANTED TO USE SUCH CONTRASTS?

The loss of a person or a place always creates a reflection or shadow that people equate with degrees of silence, pain or melancholy. In the film, confinement and the immensity Africa, especially Ethiopia emerge into each other. We wanted to begin the film in the Ethiopian countryside to show the soil as much as the wounded soul of the main character. The vast area strengthens the wanderer’s isolation. His feet move the dust after each step and the vanishing dust clouds echo the time that goes by in silence. The narrow space inside the taxi and the small flate overlooking the river both reveal a life reveal a life reducted to being a silent witness.

13° IN THE MOVIE, SILENCE IS INHABITED! ALTHOUGH ADI’S CHARACTER IS DEAF, THE SOUND OF THE MOVIE IS VERY DELICATE AND POLISHED. CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT WAS YOUR INTENTION?

We tried to treat sound in such a way that the audience shares the awareness of deafness. The film shows a strong explosion which doesn’t kill but injures. From that moment on, a bond is created between the character and the audience. (Nobody can ignore the suffering the loss of hearing causes). That explosion hurts the character in his flesh and the terror he feels makes him run away. The world of yesterday falls apart, he plunges into an abyss of silence. In the heart of silence, the film becomes an enclosed space and the beat of the arms against the young man’s frail body reveals the lifeless color of misery. This explains our choice to film the countryside, but the extent of silence isn’t the extent of the void. In our opinion, silence opens the way to a serene reflection to the Other. In the film, the context of deafness increases the ways of understanding instead of reducing. To do so, it’s necessary to deliberately adopt other codes and listening habits. That’s what we seek to reach along with David Mennessier’s work. As a radio presenter and DJ look for music treasures, David put his eclectic knowledge and his great sensitivity at the service of the film. In addition, this encounter with the world of sound magnifies the images. Gradually, that last layer leaves its print like a second skin. Step by step, it surrounds the main character who sees his own end arrive and sporadic notes accompany him like a veil of modesty on his skin. The naked skin under which blood beats in his veins.

14° DID YOU WORK IN A DIFFERENT WAY IN ETHIOPIA AND LIÈGE?

Basically, no! Our approach is based on trust. The importance of words remains the same in Amharic, Flemish, English or French.

15° HOW ARE TASKS DIVIDED UP WHEN THERE ARE TWO DIRECTORS?

Communication is fundamental. You can overcome anything when you communicate, even if you disagree. Trust is crucial otherwise the moments of great fragility couldn’t be overcome. Otherwise, having two approaches to consider everything enables to take some distance. The magic of cinema derives from its ability to open doors and bring minds together! The important thing is that it traverses border.