Youth have no voice: Bouzid – Tunisian helmer discusses cinema in Arab world

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LOS ANGELES, Dec 9, (Agencies): Tunisian helmer Leyla Bouzid premiered her debut feature “As I Open My Eyes” at the Venice Film Festival, where it picked up the first of many subsequent awards on its travels through Toronto, Stockholm, Carthage and now Dubai, screening in the Muhr Features section. “Eyes” tells the story of a young Tunisian woman struggles against her family’s wishes to pursue a singing career just before the country’s Jasmine Revolution in 2010. She is the daughter of noted director Nouri Bouzid.

Question: How complicated was the financing?

Answer: It was complicated, but it was also quite fast for a first feature, in Arabic, without a famous actor. It’s a co-production, France-Tunisia-Belgium-Emirates, so you have to find a lot of little funds, and we got lucky because people liked the screenplay. There was the problem that people were asking, “Why isn’t it about now, after the Revolution?,” but I was saying it’s very important to explain the past.

Q: Did you feel pressure from Western funds to adapt your script to their tastes?

A: I didn’t feel pressure, but I felt they have ready-made ideas and cliches, and you have to fight against this. If you don’t do the thing they expect, you have to really explain it more, but it’s possible. We got good financing – the budget was EUR600,000 ($652,000), which is not a lot for a co-production where there is a large team. The d.o.p. and the editor are French, I’m a French resident, so it’s not really that much.

Q: You gathered a very young technical team.

A: The d.o.p. Sebastien Goepfert and the editor Lilian Corbeille were with me in school, we made all our first films together. Goepfert was cameraman on “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” but “As I Open My Eyes” is the first time he was d.o.p. For the team I wanted all first-timers – it made a better film to have partners you know well, and who you worked with before. You put your whole heart into it, and the investment was much stronger with a d.o.p. who’s just starting.

Q: On a political note, do you think that opportunities for young women have opened up since former president Ben Ali was brought down?

A: In Tunisia the problem is more about youth than men and women, because compared to other countries in the region, Tunisia is very open for women, even before the Revolution, and there have always been many strong women in Tunisian cinema. There was a period where there was a small threat to women’s freedom but this is OK now; for me what’s at stake is trusting the young generation. One issue here is being a woman, another is making a film if you’re under 30, and to include a lot of young people in the film, not just on the technical team but also the actors. This is a real problem today in many areas in Tunisia, and in cinema in particular people want a renewal, so you have to fight a bit to gain a trust that exudes confidence.

Q: Do you think there is a divide in cinema between older, well-established directors, and a younger generation who has something different to say?

A: The older generation has their place, and this is good. The problem is that in Tunisia often first features are done by 45, 48, 50 year olds rather than 28 or 30. When I finished school, I decided it’s important to do a young film, with the energy of what’s happening now. Maybe in 20 years I’ll make very calm films about families, I don’t know (laughs). Maybe it’s my only energetic film, but I think we need this. It’s not against the older generation – I’m the daughter of one of the most famous Tunisian directors, so I don’t want to kill my father (laughs)! But we need this wave of young directors with their own way of looking at things. We miss films about teenagers, Arabic teenagers: what happened in our recent history came from youth energy, but we miss this in cinema.

The problem is that the youth have no voice, as if the only voice now is terrorism. Yet something is happening, because there are a lot of first Arabic features from young people who are making a very different cinema, with very different voices. But financing has to follow. And festivals too, because in European festivals there aren’t many Arabic films, or African films. If they take a film from Palestine then they don’t take a film from Tunisia, because they think, “OK, this is the same area.” It’s not the same area! Yet you’re able to take four films from South America? So much is happening in the Arab world, and it’s really different: Morocco is so different from Tunisia, it’s so different from Algeria, from Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine. It needs to be about cinema!

Meanwhile, Morocco-born, Chicago-based independent filmmaker and instructor Hakim Belabbes provides a requiem for one of Morocco’s “unaccounted for” in his latest documentary, “Weight of the Shadow,” which has its world premiere in Dubai as part of the Muhr Arab feature competition. The film is about an elderly Moroccan couple who want to find out what happened to their son, who was kidnapped 37 years ago. Belabbes, who alternates between features and docus, is a DIFF regular. He nabbed best script and best cinematography kudos for his 2011 feature “Boiling Dream,” and “Shadow” is supported by DIFF’s Enjaaz production support program.

The middle son in a family of 11 children, Belabbes was born in Boujad, where his father owned the only movie theater. After earning a B.A. in American and African literature in 1983 from Mohamed V U in Rabat, he obtained a graduate degree in film and video production from Columbia College in Chicago. Many of his documentaries focus on his extended family, such as “Boujad: A Nest in the Heat” and “Fragments.” In fact, while he was working on “Fragments,” a journalist friend told him about the Itekkou family, whose lives were forever changed by the kidnapping of one of their sons in 1974, and whose story the film followsRead.

The Itekkou family are Amazigh, the native Moroccans once referred to as Berbers. They live in Boumalene, in southern Morocco, amid a remarkable landscape of rose-colored stone. When Belabbes visits in 2007, the nonagenarian patriarch Ali poignantly recounts the events surrounding his son H’mad’s abduction. At the time, the teenager was attending a boarding school where he was a stellar pupil. However, he launched a protest because students from poor families were not given food, while the others received plenty. Classmates joined his protest. Soon after, in the middle of the night, H’mad was taken from the school. Only his belongings remained, which a sympathetic school guard gave to the family. The guard also intimated that the boy was taken by the feared State security services.

Belabbes recently wrapped shooting on a fiction feature, “Sweet Rain.” He says, “It’s a tale of M’barek, a small farmer who risks losing his land because of his inability to pay back an old loan he took from the Credit Agricol Marocain.” Belabbes was also recently elected president of the Foundation of the the High Institute of Audio-visual Professions and the Cinema in Rabat, a new state-run film institute created three years ago.

Receive

Actor Naseeruddin Shah will receive the Dubai Intl. Film Festival’s lifetime achievement award .

Appearing in over 200 films throughout the span of a four-decade acting career, Shah has dabbled in both the Hollywood and Bollywood film industries. His achievements include three National Film Awards, three Filmfare Awards and Venice Film Festival’s best actor award. Additional accolades include the Padma Shri and Padma Bhusran awards for Shah’s contributions to Indian cinema.

Shah’s latest film “Waiting,” which was directed by Anu Menon, premieres at DIFF on Dec 11.

On the cusp of the film’s 40th anniversary, DIFF will also pay tribute to Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” on Dec 12 with a complimentary beachfront screening of the cinematic classic. Credited as one of film’s first blockbusters, “Jaws” holds the legacy as Spielberg’s breakthrough film and has continued to reign as an influential work in motion picture history since its 1975 release. “Jaws” actor Richard Dreyfuss is scheduled to be in attendance at the screening.

Epic

Dubai-based Barajoun Entertainment will premiere the eagerly-awaited, epic animated feature Bilal directed by Ayman Jamal and Khurram H. Alavi with a red carpet gala screening at the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF). The 12th edition of the region’s leading film festival takes place from Dec 9-16.

The Bilal premiere on Thursday, Dec 10, will be attended by cast members including Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Game of Thrones) and rising pop sensation Jacob Latimore, as well as members of the production team including co-director and Barajoun founder Ayman Jamal. The red carpet gala and screening will take place at the home of DIFF, its purpose-built state-of-the-art venue, the Madinat Arena at Madinat Jumeirah.

Bilal tells the thousand-year-old story of a young boy and his sister, abducted into slavery in a faraway land. Bilal dreams of becoming a great warrior and eventually finds the courage to raise his voice and bring about the change he seeks. Although the film is set in the past, Jamal says that the story is a timeless one: “Bilal is a story of faith, hope and self-discovery,” says the producer and co-director. “Although the action takes place a thousand years ago, the story is about finding your own voice, about learning to honour and respect yourself and those around you and that’s a message that is just as important in today’s world.”

Bilal was entirely produced at Barajoun’s studios in Dubai across three years. The film is considered the most ambitious animation project to have come from the region to date. The script was developed by multi-award-winning authors Alex Kronemer and Michael Wolfe, working alongside a team of 360 animation and CGI talents from around the world whose credits include ‘300’, ‘Shrek’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’. The film aimed to stay as true as possible to the authenticity of the time, bringing to life a story which took place 1,400 years ago. Over 5,000 hours were spent on the research and design of the costumes which are influenced by ancient Arabia and Africa, whilst more than 90 location scenes were used to capture the grandeur of the landscapes.

The soundtrack, meanwhile, was created by Atli Örvarsson. Örvarsson has composed and orchestrated music for some of Hollywood’s biggest projects including the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ series, ‘Angels and Demons’, ‘The Holiday’ and ‘Vantage Point’.

Jamal is pleased to be premiering the movie on home soil: “I am delighted that we are celebrating the premiere of Bilal, an exceptional homegrown film, at the Dubai International Film Festival this year. The film is the remarkable true story of African hero Bilal as he goes from braving oppression to becoming a noble leader and an inspiration to generations. The writing and the lush visuals catapult this film to greatness and are a triumph for the cast, crew and everyone at Barajoun Entertainment.”

Masoud Amralla Al Ali, DIFF Artistic Director added: “Ayman Jamal and Khurram H. Alavi’s Bilal is a wonderfully crafted film which some of the most talented artists in the industry have contributed to. The result is simply outstanding. The story of Bilal will resonate with everyone; the themes of the film are universal and transcend culture, language and geography and we are proud to be screening it in Dubai within our festival. Bilal is deeply moving and uplifting, epic in scope and will inspire audiences of all ages with timeless lessons of hope, courage and love.”

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