Shorts

Do you have a particular interest in football? In your opinion, what place does football have in Tunisia? I am both a big fan of football as well as a critic of its excesses (the business of football, the political exploitation of football, the fanaticism of both the fans and the major actors in this sport, to cite a few examples). I often go to the stadium to watch my favorite team play but I don’t like to talk about football, and it annoys me when debates over football are put front and (…)

How did your film come about? In the beginning, there was the desire to talk about what had happened to Lebanon since October 2019, precisely, a catastrophic economic crisis and the protest movement that ensued. What happened in Lebanon in the space of a year is of such tremendous violence and vulgarity, namely the loss of all the people’s savings due to the regime’s vile kleptocracy, that I wanted to make a film that would do justice to this brutal and vulgar violence. Last year in (…)

How much are you aware of the severity of the droughts in Lebanon? Is this what sparked your interest in this subject matter? A lot of the environmental science concerned in the film derived from discussions with my father who is a soil-chemist and professor of agriculture in Lebanon. Droughts were not specifically what sparked my interest. It was more about sustainable agriculture and climate change on the whole. We don’t only have dry years, we also flood sometimes – but this is because (…)

Can you explain your choice of title? During the preparatory stages and the shooting of the film, the project was called Kiki, after the class mascot. The film was written as a tragi-comedy, but the project went through a transformation as time went on. At the end of editing, we realized that the original title didn’t really correspond anymore to the film, which ended up more dramatic than I had first imagined. We decided to call it Palma because that is the name of the town where the two (…)

Obvious question. Why did you choose to explore this subject matter? Have you had any personal experience of the issues around euthanasia? I was drawn to this subject matter because I think it is one of the greatest questions of our age, or any age, and I don’t have an answer for it. I wanted to make a film which explores my doubt surrounding euthanasia and also how it relates to other human transactions. How and when we die are often taboo subjects and, in recent years, due to challenges (…)

This is a very moving story. Is it based on personal experience or someone you know? The story of the arranged marriage depicted in my film Al-Sit is a common one in Sudan and the norm for many Sudanese families. While I did not personally experience an arranged marriage, I grew up in this cultural environment and know many young girls whose marriages were arranged by their parents, or, especially, their grandmothers. I am always curious about what goes through the mind of a young girl (…)

Can you explain the choice of title? Hilum means two different things in our language. In the Tagalog language, “hilum/hilom” means “remedy”, while in the Visayan language it means “silence”. I grew up in Manila where we speak Tagalog, while my mother grew up in the Visayan region where they speak Bisaya – the language they also speak in the Camotes Islands where we shot our film. I figured I’d combine our cultures together and create a title that captures the feeling of “a silent (…)

Beryl has featured in a number of your films. Can you tell us a bit more about her? Who was the inspiration for her character? How has Beryl’s character evolved since we first met her? Beryl started life as a very one-dimensional character in a comic strip that Joanna developed in art college. In Joanna’s first Beryl film, her graduation short, Girls Night Out, she emerged as one of a group of working-class women in a local factory who organized a visit to a male stripper to celebrate (…)

What made you want to tell the story of Vincent Blanchot? Is the character based on a real person? A few years ago I read Melville’s short story Bartleby. It takes place on Wall Street in the 1850s and tells the story of Bartleby, an accountant who ceases working one day and replies to every question from his boss by saying, “I would prefer not to”. The book has a plot and secondary characters, but I was deeply fascinated by this man who is detached from everything while still being there, (…)

You created three great female characters, and the daughter-mother bond is really well depicted. What can you tell us about the character development? Rayka: Spoiler alert here. The story is very personal. My father passed away during my first year of college. Despite pressure from my family and friends to take the semester off, I decided to return only a week after his passing. I believed that in order to survive the moment, I needed to throw myself into film school and tune out the (…)