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Jawad Rhalib • Director

Three sisters: "a work of fiction imbued with social realism”

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- Cinergie meets Jawad Rhalib, the director of The Turtles’ Song. He talks about his new project Three sisters, set to begin shooting in a few days

Jawad Rhalib • Director

A few days before Three sisters was set to start filming, we met with Jawad Rhalib at his home, which blurs the line between living and working space. After making a number of documentaries, the director of The Turtles’ Song, a film about the protests in Morocco, is continuing his political activism with a work of fiction. There’s nothing like the lightness of comedy and the symbolism of stories to provoke thought.

Jawad Rhalib: The provisional name of the film I start shooting next week is Three sisters. It’s a work of fiction imbued with social realism, a subject close to my heart, dealt with through comedy. I wanted to condemn communitarianism, the backing down of a community, which, despite living in Europe, continues to follow the status quo of its country of origin. I’m not just talking about Morocco here; I could just as easily be talking about the Turkish, Albanian, Portuguese or Spanish communities. It’s about a father who fears for the morality of his daughters and prefers to keep them confined to his farm than risk having them lose their virginity. This farm, representing ‘behind closed doors’, imprisonment, is inherited by the sisters when their father dies. They are forced to save it to pay off the debts he left behind. Putting the farm in order is symbolic; it’s more about settling their score with the past. Enter an aunt, the twin sister of the girls’ father, who is the key to the girls’ puzzling past. The film starts with the father being buried on the farm, illegally.

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Cinergie: Why do you say it’s a film about communitarianism? J.R.: If you walk through the streets of Molenbeek or Anderlecht, you can see lights on in the windows of the houses, and it’s intriguing – it makes you want to know what’s going on inside, but you never do. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things going on in there. There are entire communities shut away, plugged into their national TV stations. They live in Belgium, but not really. Children are brought up with no respect for their rights or obligations – the law of the community, social pressure, is what matters. Take the veil for instance. You see 6 and 7-year-old girls wearing the veil and 9-year-old boys playing in the street until the small hours when they have school the next day.

And we, as citizens, turn a blind eye. The attitude of our political leaders is even worse. They don’t question the academic failure of these children, why they’re dropping out of school, delinquency. And when, every now and again, you get a politician who points out certain problems, he’s branded a racist. That’s what I’m going to focus on in my film, not using documentary, but fiction, with a very dynamic style, an English style of writing, comedy. These children are lost somewhere between two nationalities, which are both denied to them whatever their country of origin or host country.

C.: Why such violence?J.R.: Because I want to condemn certain practices. Recently, a young woman died following an exorcism, as that also goes on here unfortunately. There are pseudo healers, Muslim imams, who supposedly heal people using the Koran, or their fists perhaps. Also because this is a story about girls defending themselves, girls who get tough and are forced answer the questions they’ve been asking themselves since they were children.

C.: A politically incorrect film? J.R.: Precisely! I attack certain attitudes, and I know that this will shock, at a visual level at least, and that it might please those who think like me but dare not say anything for fear of being treated as a racist. With my roots, I can get away with condemning them.

C.: This is a self-produced film. You didn’t file the project with the film commission. Why? Is this a subject you could not have received funding for?

J. R.: Probably, given the subject matter and the way it’s portrayed. One of the sisters, for example, is afraid of “cocks”, because she was raped as a child. Hypocrisy still reigns supreme: on the one hand, a community fears for the virginity of a girl, but then if she’s raped by a member of her own family, they look the other way. I don’t think the film commission would have accepted what I have my protagonists say or the situations they find themselves in. Besides, they have just accepted a feature film project of mine, Rebellious Girl. I couldn’t submit another project before finishing the one I’d been granted funding for. I also wanted to prove that it’s completely possible to go back to the filmmaking style of Ken Loach; using little means and above all few people.

C.: Do you not think that a film which shocks will be rejected by the very community you’re aiming it at?J.R.: This film is not only aimed at the North African community. I would like above all to catch the attention of the authorities, political leaders and associations, to say to them: “Stop this hypocrisy!” It’s their duty to protect a child who’s still out playing in the street late at night when he has school the next day.

I want to get away from simple finger pointing: it’s the other person’s fault! I want to spark debate, and above all, get the attention of the political authorities: what’s going on in these houses, what’s becoming of the children of these families, why this academic and social failure?

When the sisters turn to a social worker for help, she tells them: “it’s a private matter, we can’t do anything for you”. They find the same door closed on them when they turn to the police.

In the film, I give a voice to this generation that doesn’t have one. I give them power. I give them power and they go and settle their scores.

I want to make a very realistic film, so much so that you could believe this farm actually exists. I wanted the film to take place on a farm rather than in the city, even if it does seem a bit odd, to really make the situation of total imprisonment these girls find themselves in stand out. And it’s something that is true for a lot of girls today, in the city. For many fathers, a girl represents a problem, because he must obsessively ensure that she’s still a virgin when she enters her husband’s household. If this doesn’t happen, then it’s a disaster, shameful.

I want to condemn what men have turned Islam into. They use it and interpret the Koran to suit their needs, to their own benefit. They deny women everything, just so that they can control them and bring them to heel.

C.: Women are the future of mankind.

J. R.: I can’t stand feminists, but they’re right to fight! I don’t understand why men have this obsession of dominating women. In Saudi Arabia, women aren’t even allowed to drive – they’re totally dependent on men.

In fact, I have a nice little story about that.

After the Prophet abolished adoption, a woman came to see him saying her husband had become jealous of their adoptive son now that he could no longer be considered their adoptive child, but a stranger that might seduce her. The Prophet told her that for this child to no longer be a stranger in the family, all she had to do was give him her breast and he would become her son. So Saudi women said to themselves: we can’t drive – to get around we need drivers, strangers, which we’re not allowed to see. So, to be sure that these drivers respect us as they would a member of their family, are we supposed to give them our breast?

And using examples from the Koran to show just how absurd things are upsets Muslims!

 

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(Translated from French)

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