L’AUTRE
MONDE/THE OTHER WORLD
Director’s Statement by Merzak Allouache
The script for The Other World, as well as my desire to again direct a film in
During this period,
And then in 1999, perhaps due to my impression that things
were returning to a certain stability, I wanted to go
back: to see, feel, film, and then
recount something on the subject of
Baya A. had spent this entire
hellish period in the interior of the country, without ceasing her work on the
ground, protecting herself simply through everyday prudence and anonymity. Her work as a field journalist contributed
enormously to the elaboration and enrichment of our story through the insertion
into it of elements taken directly from the reality of those years of violence.
Through this fiction, which we know will not be easily
acceptable in
What particularly surprised me in Algiers while I was
putting the final touches on the script, was that in Algiers no one seemed to
want to speak about what was happening less than fifty kilometers from the
capital. I also had the impression that
amnesia had taken hold, and all those who had died were slowly being forgotten.
It’s
true that the population yearns for peace and tranquility. Commerce is flourishing, security is
increasingly assured, young people want to cut loose when they can, and of
course, as in many
I
wanted to make this film also because I am a filmmaker and because there is an
urgent need to “bring out” images from this country, an urgent need for fiction,
a need for cinema. The state of
deterioration of Algerian culture and film these last years is absolutely
horrifying.
My
filmmaker friends who remained in the country survived as best they could,
squeezed between the menace on the one side and forced inactivity on the
other. The same for
the actors and technicians. And
everyone is now slowly beginning to hope for a re-opening. Algerian films are no longer present
anywhere. They no longer exist.
The heroine of The
Other World is a woman, French from an Algerian family. Through her, as well as through the other
women that she meets over the course of her travels, I want to pay homage to
the Algerian women whose courage was without limit during the leaden years.
The dialogue in the film is for the most part in French, as
the heroine, Yasmine, does
not speak Arabic. I was surprised to
find the French language still alive there, used by the young, even though,
officially, “Arabization” is absolute. Satellite dishes have played a great part in
opening Algerians to the larger world.
--Merzak Allouache
Translated by Michael Dembrow
http://www.planet-dz.com/_En-Cours/SEPTEMBRE/allouache-merzak-lautre-monde.htm