The high school teacher Samuel Patty was murdered and beheaded October 16, 2020 at five in the afternoon in a Éragny streeton the periphery of Paris. It was an Islamist terrorist act. His crime was having taught, in a class on freedom of expression and after inviting Muslim students to leave the classroom if they wanted, a caricature of Charlie Hebdo that represented the prophet Muhammad. It happened shortly after the filmmaker Jawad Rhalib would have started working on a project on the radicalization of young Muslims in Belgian schools.
With the experience of his previous film, the documentary Au temps où les Arabes dansaient (When the Arabs dance)in which he talked about artistic freedom and what it meant to be Muslim, and with which he was able to listen to thousands of students, the director decided to turn to fiction to show the world what was happening with young people in his country. Amalstarring the magnificent actress Lubna Azabalis the result, a brave and profound film that opens the door to urgent debates today in Europe.
In the film, a teacher of Arab origin at a high school Brussels encourages his students to defend freedom of expression and, in response to the attacks on a lesbian student, shows them the writings of Abu Nawasa Muslim poet of the 8th century. All of this bothers some students and the religious circles in which they live.
“Reading and opening oneself to the world is essential to move forward, ask questions, form critical thinking,” he tells them. Amalwho reads with them The last day of a person sentenced to deathof Victor Hugotrying to make them see a human being in the other, without stopping at their skin color, their religion or their sex. The appropriation of the word ‘freedom’ by radical groups, the consequences of an education weighed down by pressure and fear, harassment on social networks or the need for culture are themes of this film, which comes with a powerful charge. politics and with a very clear warning.
Did the murder of Samuel Paty influence your decision to make the film?
Yes. Although I must say that reality has been ahead of us, because the idea began in the 2019 with a documentary he had made called Au temps où les Arabes dansaientwhich speaks of the freedom of artistic expression and being in the Muslim world. We presented it at festivals, movie theaters, we did many screenings in schools here in Brussels… and there the radicalization of certain young people was confirmed. There were also meetings with teachers and school directors, and I understood that today it is very difficult to teach in Europe, especially for teachers who want to address somewhat sensitive topics, because there is automatically resistance, even on the part of the teachers.
Can’t European teachers teach in freedom today?
No. The teachers are not supported and feel pressured, especially regarding certain topics such as homosexuality, freedom of expression… they are accused and threatened. So a film had to be made to give some dignity to professionals again. The teachers try to open our minds and not comfort us in our religious convictions.
The film explains how radicals infiltrate religion classes… I was born and raised in Moroccoat school I had a room where I studied the Muslim religion. Religious education was in the sense of what to talk about, how to behave with people, how to be, etc. And in the next room there were classes on Philosophy, Poetry, and Arab Muslim Literature, very rich, very good. There I discovered Abu Nawaswhich completely changed my view of things. So there was no problem between the courses. The teachers were there together. Each one taught their own thing. When thinking about this film I told myself that with it I had to go to the end, not caress the subject or soften things. We must contrast Islam and Islamism.
But has the film sparked discussions about religion classes in schools?
There has been a lot of repercussions with this film on certain politicians. The film is also seen in schools in Francein addition to Belgium. There have been many discussions in schools and at the political level in Belgium there is already a debate about whether or not religion courses should be removed and replaced with Citizenship courses. In Canada, there is a very interesting debate about this whole issue of secularism. With the film the debate has been encouraged there, in Quebec They understand it very well, because for many years they have suffered from the Christian religion at school. They have a lot to decide, because they have taken a long time to get the priests out of the classrooms and now they have another religion that arrives and wants to impose itself.
Could this film pose a danger to you and the team that made it?
I don’t know the people behind it, but the main actress and I are the most visible faces. I didn’t ask myself that question at the beginning because otherwise I wouldn’t have made the film, but now I wonder how it has been received and if some politicians are going to listen. The advantage of being a Muslim Arab film director and having an actress also of Muslim origin is that we have legitimacy, they cannot call us racists or Islamophobes.although some people have done it. It’s surprising, but the film has been in Belgium for 18 weeks and there have been no insults on social media. Nothing has happened in the movie theaters, the screenings have gone very well, we are still at the top of the box office in Belgium… maybe later, when there is broadcast on television, but for now nothing has happened. I have also been very careful in my writing to stick to reality and not fall into clichés because it is a very sensitive topic. One hundred percent of what is said in the film is real.
You come from a tradition of documentary cinema and although here you have switched to fiction, has the research process been the most important thing?
Yes. This project took us four years for a very simple reason, it had to be documented very well. I had meetings with many teachers and interviewed school principals and young students. Everything you’ve seen in the movie are things that have happened. With the previous documentary film, which for me was a laboratory because it had many young people, 5,000 young peopledebating, students talking about artistic freedoms and speaking clearly about those topics, I was able to know and receive their points of view, their way of speaking, their way of reacting… which I have now been able to reproduce in Amal.
In addition to releasing it in theaters, you take the film to schools. Can cinema help deradicalize young people?
I sincerely believe so. The end of the film is sad, it is real. Not everything is going to be fixed for the characters, but there is an optimistic side, those young people who shout at the end that this is not their religion. Unfortunately, other filmmakers do not dare to go that far with cinema. But in my case, the fact of showing this film to those young people in schools, institutes and in movie theaters or on television, I believe that it is going to help, to create something, that something is going to move. Some will recognize themselves in the film, and it will help them try to understand.
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