| |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
Faouzi Bensaïdi
Every film has a different character that affects its making. Some are gentle, tender, fundamentally calm, this one was a disobedient boy from the start, stubborn and pretty much indifferent.
I feel as I have directed a movie after another, and not for the mere pleasure; I put this one against the others, against all of the others, mine and everything else, playing with rules and expectations. The result is a homage to cinema and to the cinematographers that gave me the inspiration to make films. “Bad boys” always have a big heart.
The film tries to explore the new fragile and unstable territories of love in Morocco, and the exchange that follows. The passions, the desires and the disillusions as well. A film that mixes many genres without respecting any single one: noir, melodrama, burlesque, romantic, thriller… An uncertain movie with a fluctuating identity, just like my characters.
It was very pleasing to film these characters, so realistic, imbued with a tangible, touchable life, and at the same time stylised, sexy.
I shot the movie in a city that gave its name to a cult film: "Casablanca". "KAZA" for its citizens. Today it is a rebel city, wild and fascinating, struggling between antiquity and a wanton, galloping, globalized modernity. A city that does not allow itself to be filmed easily. For a long time I felt that it was resisting my gaze, and in the tense and intense space between this resistance and my desire to look at it, this movie was born.
Faouzi Bensaïdi
Faouzi Bensaïdi was born in Meknès in Morocco in 1968 and lives between Paris and Casablanca. Director, writer and actor, after obtaining a diploma at the Dramtic Art Institute of Rabat, he started working for the theatre. In 1995 he moved to Paris to study at the National Academy of Dramatic Art. His debut as a director was in 1998 with the short movie La Falaise, which received awards in a number of festivals. The following year he collaborated at the script of Loin (Lontano) by André Téchiné. In 2000 he directed two short movies: Le Mur and Trajets, the first was awarded in Cannes, and the second in Venice. In 2003 his first feature film Mille mois, was shown in Cannes (“Un certain régard”) and won the “Prix de la Jeunesse” and the “Prix le premier régard”.
|
 |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
