THE FILM VERDICT: Bonjour, Maryam! You came to filmmaking through acting and screenwriting. How has it influenced your style as a director?
MARYAM TOUZANI: I acted in only one film, Razzia, before I started making my own films, and that wasn’t planned. I had cowritten the screenplay with my partner in life, Nabil Ayouch, and everything happened very naturally. I actually started out as a journalist and became very interested in documentary filmmaking as a way for persons to give voice to their lives. I imagined I would make only documentaries. But a turning point came when I lost my father and I felt there was something I needed to express: grieving, the search for a way to move on. So I wrote a short film to say goodbye, When They Slept, about a girl who loses her grandfather and ignores tradition to say goodbye in her own way.
TFV: In your two feature films, Adam and The Blue Caftan, a major theme is women who challenge society.
MT: In my first films, all the main characters were little girls and women. In Adam there is a trio: two women and a girl. I started writing it when I was pregnant with my son, who is five years old today. It had been four years since I made my second short, Aya Goes to the Beach, because I didn’t want to make films because it was expected of me, but because there was a real urge to tell a story. It isn’t a rational process and there is always an emotional response when I start writing. But when I got pregnant, it took me back to this woman who came knocking on our door one day. She was eight months pregnant and my parents took her in, like the Lubna Azabal character does in Adam. It was against the law to have a child out of wedlock and she couldn’t keep the baby. I went with her to give him away. I didn’t realize how deeply this experience marked me until 17 years later when I got pregnant. And I started thinking of her all the time, and the violence she had experienced giving her child up. I started writing. It was my maternal instinct and all I felt as a woman, that triggered my writing. But what touches me above all is l’humaine (the human). I really don’t believe stories have to be gendered, as long as they’re coming from somewhere authentic
TFV: In The Blue Caftan, the characters also go against society through their intimate lives. What was the origin of the story?
MT: With this story there was also a trigger, which happened while I was scouting in the medina for Adam. I met this man who owned a hairdressing salon, and I was very touched by what I felt he wasn’t saying about his life. I could feel the pressure he had to face every day — he was a married man and he was living behind a façade like Halim, to be socially accepted. But inside it was turmoil. We didn’t talk about this, but there are things that don’t need to be verbalized. It took me back to memories of my youth growing up in Tangiers, where I heard so many stories about couples where the husband was gay and led a parallel life. Everybody knew, but nobody said anything. It’s something that has always intrigued and touched me.
TFV: I very much like the way D.P. Virginie Surdej lights your films. Can you talk about your approach to images in your filmmaking?
MT: When I’m writing, my writing isn’t anything rational. I don’t know where my story is taking me. I knew Halim [played by Saleh Bakri] would be a character, but I didn’t know why. Then there is always something that marks us and needs to come through. I let myself be carried by my characters, my emotions, by what I’m feeling. And my scenes are always very visual as I’m writing. The colors and textures are there, the lighting is there — all this is very detailed in the screenplay. I love painting. Maybe that’s why it’s so important to me to find exactly the right set, the apartment I want to shoot in, Halim’s store, because I want to shoot in natural environments.
I had worked with Virginie Surdej on Adam. She has great sensibility, a beautiful eye; she understands where I want to go and what I want to look for. She knows the certain way I want to illuminate my characters. We prepare each shot in advance and it’s important to know what it’s going to say in advance. Every cut is important for me.
TFV: Do you still cowrite with Nabil Ayouch?
MT: We only cowrote together once, on Razzia; on all the other films he contributed to the writing process, like I contributed to his films, meaning we talk over the characters and the story. He’ll read and give me feedback, I’ll read and give him feedback – it’s really a collaboration. It’s beautiful to have the regard (look) of someone who has a sensitivity you’re aligned with, and who can be objective when you’re too emotionally involved in your story.
