Not to say that wallowing in misery is the answer, but wanting to fictionalize such a reality, doesn’t it risk aestheticizing it, suppressing the reality of the street?

Not from the moment that the process is coherent and in line with reality. This was the starting point: in the lives of these children, there is a portion of violence and crudeness which is part of their social reality, and there is also a portion of the imagination, suffused with dream. The street has a power that is both tragic and lyrical, a power that is maintained by the imagination of these children. At the drop of a hat, they can take off into real fantasy. This film is the meeting-place of two universes–mine, which is that of the initiation and discovery, and a reality which paralleled that: the scene with the satellite dishes, for example, is something that was directly inspired by their reality.

From the moment that one becomes interested in them, they manipulate, lie, and distort reality. To an extent that’s what happened during the first week when I went down into the street with my camera. When they saw me turn up, everything that they let me see was false. I quickly changed my approach, starting to leave my camera aside, and just kept returning, attaching myself to them. They saw that they weren’t going to shake me off in a few seconds like the usual journalist, that this work would tell a story that emerged from them.

The more that went on, the more I observed them, the less I posed questions. They were used to people coming to them in a one-time manner, not as part of an ongoing, constructive process; generally, the solutions that were offered them were just plastering over their problems, not getting at the essence, so it was too much to expect them to be honest.

It was difficult to introduce acting rules to them from the moment that we wanted them to learn technique. It was during the preparation phase that I realized the extent to which they were in fact actors, actors in life of course, but also actors pure and simple. I therefore told myself that there was really no need to teach them anything. However, there are technical constraints and considerations that a child naturally wouldn’t know about. We tried to adapt the kids to these limitations, but without success: they are not adaptable to this kind of constraint, given that they live in a world of complete freedom. We therefore tried the opposite tack: to adapt the film to the children. We weren’t necessarily more successful there: for example, when one of them took off for three days, we couldn’t simply wait around with nothing to do, since there were production issues; despite everything, a film remains in the end an economic machine.

Yet there was a moment where everyone began to internalize the other reality of the film, the non-economic one–the reason we were there, the real story that we were telling, and the attempt to pull from that story its ultimate purpose. Things then began to go better. The constraints, which had been so difficult for them to bear, actually became things that saved them. The children began to cling to these rules and agreements like lifesavers, things that could help them to move forward, to get out of their yo-yo life that was a series of ups and downs. Besides, this is what traumatized me during the preparation phase of the project. With these children, as I was inserting myself into their world, I felt that things would be going well, and we were being filled with hope. But then everything could collapse in a second’s glance, a thought. The next day, it’s over, he’s become someone different. The challenge of the film, which was in a sense to freeze them, gave them a goal, something completely new for them.

The goal was not to give him a physical embodiment, but to journey with the dream of this child, a dream which becomes that of his pals, of all children. It’s the mythical dimension of the character which interested me. As things play out, his status changes from that of a kid to that of a hero, then from a hero to a symbol. The film revolves around that.

Cinemascope virtually imposed itself by the setting: there is always this horizontal quality about the port, with its 360-degree perspective, where Dib’s gang hung out. On top of that, Cinemascope always gives a kind of universality to the style. Without forgetting of course that these kids are always moving around a lot in the frame. Giving them more horizontal space gave them more freedom.

The animation came from listening to them. We presented this film project to them as a workshop, around which we created other workshops, in order to put a little distance between them and the film–we always told them that there are other things in life more important than cinema. We therefore did workshops on sport, singing, and painting. I don’t know why, but they quickly gravitated towards painting. Perhaps because it was something truly new for them. We had hoped during the writing of the script to be able to move beyond realism, but we didn’t know just how to accomplish that until then. We were able to pursue this idea by giving the kids’ drawings to Folimage, an animation studio whose films I like a great deal.

I didn’t choose those scars. But once these kids were cast, it was out of the question to use make-up to make these scars disappear. I don’t doubt the extent to which they will have an impact on viewers, become a real source of reflection.

It’s a question that I continue to ask myself. I always tell myself no, just as I always said the same to them. My role as a filmmaker ends with my film. If it can provoke a societal debate, as has been the case in Morocco since the opening of the film, so much the better; but from then on it’s the civil society that must take up the baton. I often told them that the film was a chapter in their lives, that those who wanted to escape from their current circumstances could use the film as a springboard, in part because they were paid for their work. Those who wanted to return to the streets after the film, that was their problem: we cannot spend our lives running after them. Happily, for the majority, the street was no longer a life-choice for them. But when I hear that one of them does slip back, I can’t help but take that as a personal setback.

Professionally speaking, I’ve already left this experience by accepting another, somewhat lighter project. I had at first refused that project, but then went back to it precisely to help me to gently remove myself from this one. On a personal level, I don’t have any desire to place psychological barriers between myself and that period in my life. I remain present with them, being there for them when they call me, but at the same time I am trying to initiate another level of relationship with them.

They’ve never told me what they think of it, but they are proud of what they’ve done. Especially because their families have seen it, because people have seen them. People have given them time and paid attention to them, which they never really had until then, beyond the few seconds at a red light when they were selling their Kleenex. For an hour and a half, people were enclosed in a room solely for them. This necessarily has allowed their sense of self, their dignity, their self-respect to be reborn. I think that is their most beautiful victory.

Interview by Sam Lowry, March 26, 2001

Les Inrocks.com

http://www.lesinrocks.com/DetailArticle.cfm?iditem=90752&idheading1=4

Translated from the French by Michael Dembrow

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