00:00This is Tim Wasper from FastTrack on SERP TV.
00:29I'm here in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for the Red Sea International Film Festival.
00:34We think it's a very personal story, so it's close to home.
00:39I think that, for me, the acceptance and love was one of the major themes I wanted to highlight
00:47in the film, because I think that it's a film that doesn't give you any sort of resolution
00:53and that, at the end, all this mother that can give him was love, understanding and acceptance.
01:00But to get there, it took a while.
01:03And I wanted to play on the denial, to play on the journey and see how much I can stretch
01:08this denial and how much I can push it.
01:13And to keep pushing this denial and play on the psychological aspect until this mother
01:18understands that there is no resolution.
01:21There is only love.
01:23There's only acceptance.
01:24Yeah, I think with mental health, because I never labeled the illness in the film, but
01:29me and Nizar, we were working on schizoaffective and how we can basically have Nizar embody this
01:40illness through the physicality and through his movement and through those blank eyes at
01:47the end of the film.
01:48That was not easy for him to achieve.
01:49We had to work through that together, do a lot of research.
01:53I know schizoaffective very well, again, because it's a personal story about someone close to
01:58me, but I'm protecting his privacy.
02:00I promised him.
02:01But it's basically, it was a painful journey for me because I know this illness very well
02:07and the diagnosis of it is very difficult.
02:11So we had to be also very subtle.
02:12We had to, you know, get away from the melodrama and just see how am I going to embody this illness
02:19and whether it's schizoaffective or not, it doesn't matter.
02:21But like he had to, Nizar had to know what is the illness so he can basically work and build on that.
02:28And he, he read every book.
02:30He did research.
02:30We went to doctors.
02:32He really, we were preparing for three years.
02:42Can you talk about, because it's also, it's not just psychological and internal, but it's
02:59also societal.
03:00And obviously you played to that aspect as well.
03:03Well, you know, with, with Nizar, um, again, we were working a lot together, but for me
03:09in the society, the social aspect, uh, and everything and how the mother shuts down her
03:15friends when they basically tell her, you know, your son is weird, the teacher, I don't
03:21know what happened at school.
03:22And so I think that I wanted to play on that aspect to show that we live in a society where
03:28mental health is not accepted.
03:29Mental health is still a stigma.
03:31Mental health is still a taboo.
03:32And I had to really, um, um, um, hit that in a very subtle, nuanced way, rather than become
03:40a very, you know, explicit, um, film, but that turns into an issue movie.
03:45I wanted to stay in the head of the mother and just basically shut them off, put them off
03:51screen.
03:52And I think the, the society in Jordan is still really behind, uh, in the Middle East, actually
03:58in general, and North Africa.
03:59Uh, mental health is not talking about mental health is still a shame.
04:03Uh, people hide their kids behind doors.
04:05They refuse therapy.
04:06Um, they refuse medication.
04:08They think, they think that you're weak.
04:10They don't know that this is an actual illness.
04:14And there's a lot of harshness, um, as well from sometimes from the father, because he,
04:20he doesn't want to accept that his eldest son, who's a man, who's in, in, in adults, adolescence
04:28is not being strong enough.
04:31And he doesn't understand that this is an actual illness.
04:34And this is really important.
04:35And this is one of the major, um, um, themes of the film.
04:39And what I want to talk about is that don't judge your kids, help them and give them love
04:43because the film is about the mother's unconditional love to her child.
04:47The visual language is very specific because it shows the details of his world, but it also
05:11shows sometimes the isolation, but also sometimes the tenderness.
05:15Did you talk about that even from the first shot?
05:17So it was really all scripted.
05:19I mean, I wrote all of this in the script, but then I had Farouk Lareid, who's my cinematographer,
05:24who shot for Daughters for Kothar Bin Hania.
05:27Um, he's lovely.
05:28He's extremely talented.
05:30And we had only 22 days to shoot.
05:32So we had to really know each shot, how we wanted to shoot it, how we wanted to frame it.
05:37We had no time to, uh, improvise too much.
05:40Everything was planned.
05:41Um, and he gave me the exact, um, mood and feeling that I was looking for.
05:50And even with the change of the aspect ratio in the middle of the film, this was all in
05:54the script.
05:55So thankfully, because I'm the director and the writer, I knew exactly what I wanted and
05:59how I wanted to basically, uh, play each image, uh, because it's, it was a very, very
06:05difficult and challenging film because I'm talking about something that's invisible, which
06:09is the denial of this mother.
06:11Yeah.
06:11It's something that you cannot touch.
06:13You cannot see.
06:13Well, we rehearsed a lot.
06:32I mean, me and Nazar, we were working for three years, uh, preparing for the illness.
06:36At first I did not give him the script.
06:38So he only read it eight months before the shoot.
06:41Uh, he read almost the final version and I was giving him tips and hints of scenes and
06:45basically discussing stuff with him or, and like if he thinks he hit the teacher or he
06:50didn't hit the teacher, even if we never really see it in the film.
06:52Um, I think that I wanted to, um, to, um, to focus on for him to focus on the, on his character
07:04and how he can embody this illness in a very subtle way.
07:08So we had to really work through that.
07:10Uh, Clara is like extremely talented.
07:13She's a pro.
07:14Um, I worked with her, um, a couple of months on zoom, uh, just a few calls and she came to
07:19Jordan three weeks, uh, before the shoot and we were working, um, on a daily basis, rehearsing,
07:26going scene by scene.
07:28Sometimes I'd rewrite like the scene with the masks.
07:30She basically inspired me to rewrite it.
07:33Um, her and Nazar, both of them.
07:35And, and we were, we were doing a lot of, um, uh, talking about the body movements as well.
07:42Um, but really, uh, both of them are incredible.
07:46Nazar, this is his first lead role.
07:47So he really, um, he really did his homework again, like he did a lot of research.
07:54He was working on his arc.
07:56He was, he's really, I think that directors like me are lucky to have actors like Clara
08:03Khouria and Hamad Nazar, because they really know, um, what I wanted.
08:08They knew what I wanted and they knew exactly the character's motivations.
08:11And they would ask specific questions for each scene.
08:15Like, why am I doing this?
08:16Why is he doing that?
08:17What's the motive here?
08:18What's the backstory here?
08:19What's the, so we were really, really into the details of everything that was not in the script.
08:23Bye-bye.
08:30Bye-bye.
08:30Bye-bye.
