"Becoming an artist is not a decision; it's a necessity." -- Asmae El Moudir

5 Questions #15: The director of THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES, Morocco's nomination for the Oscar and winner of Cannes' Un Certain Regard's director award, now premiering in the US at Sundance

Why do we do what we do? What is it that we want what we do to do? We seek understanding. We want to better this world. We hope to be additive, to bring peace to those we love and share our lives with. We want to grow and to heal. Maybe we can make something wonderful! And unique and distinct, something that touches others on the other side of the world.

In screening Asmae El Moudir’s beautiful film I was awash in all these questions. I was reminded why I so deeply love cinema. I was not prepared for it. I knew nothing about it. And I gained a lifetime of meaning, feeling, inspiration, and hope from it. I look forward to you enjoying some of the same.

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Photo: Ammar Abd Rabbo

Your film wonderfully captures the transformative power of art, or perhaps more accurately, the transformative power of creativity. The whole family and community gets involved in the project, and we see how they are able to confront their shared trauma. The process is the healing — and it is highly dramatic. What is it that makes creative acts themselves a great source for cinema and study, and what did you learn about it in the process?

I really had to create a unique cinematic process and device to get my family to talk. To free ourselves from the past.  We lived in silence, with so many things left unsaid, with an erased memory, and we were obliged to keep quiet and obey our grandmother, who thought walls had ears. As a result, speech was stifled. 

The only way to free speech was through art. Creation enabled me to invent a space without ears, and turn it into a means of therapy. 

The question of erased memory arises first in the home, then in the neighborhood and society, and the film was a way of showing that small, familiar stories were only the symptoms of larger ones. My little house could be a symbolic miniature house that could represent all other houses. 

I didn't realize right away that the film was therapy, but much later it helped change our daily relationship. I realized that talking was a necessity. Even if, for me, cinema provokes things and never cures anyone. What makes this interaction with my family, these creative acts themselves, a great source of cinema and study is that I've learned from this subject and this process that time is revealing and that any story can be told even without proof - it just has to be a real, accessible story. 

In dealing with real life subjects, beyond just putting the camera on them, how do you ensure you are giving them the dignity, humanity, compassion that all of us are deserving of?

To ensure my characters' privacy, sometimes I had to take the camera away and let them talk freely, in total liberty and without any pressure. 

It took me ten years to get my family comfortable with the idea, to get them to overcome their traumas and express themselves freely. To achieve this, I first set up microphones throughout the house so that they could share their stories freely, without the camera, which was perceived as a weapon in the beginning. Then I had to listen to them for hours, analyzing their way of thinking and the way I could get closer to them. My camera often took its distance, because in my opinion, nothing transgresses a person's dignity more than putting a camera in front of their face and asking them to tell their own story. So I had to be prepared and vigilant. 

When and how did you determine that you would be an artist? Was there a particular work or moment? How did that change over the years?

I believe that becoming an artist is not a decision, it's a necessity. I needed to tell this traumatic story before moving on. Maybe if I could write (music), I'd have made a live album, or if I could paint, I'd have made a painting, but unfortunately I can't even draw an apple. 

I was inspired by the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami and Akira Kurosawa, two different schools: the former taught me the beauty of the real approach, and the latter taught me the artistic and aesthetic beauty of the way a story can be told. 

The need to tell my story and the lack of images led me to find a way of expressing myself, and that was cinema. 

For nonfiction work, we need great characters AND great subjects. So much is about establishing trust and confidence with the characters. What advice do you have in terms of how to do that to be granted access, and then to maintain that trust through what is often a long process?

This is the most difficult part. It took me a long time to convince my grandmother, who doesn't like photos, to take part in my film. I started the development of this film in 2012. I tried to create my own archives for seven years so I could use them later in what I call the laboratory, and two days before the last part of the shooting in 2020 in the workshop, my grandmother was reluctant to make the trip from Casablanca to Marrakech. I had to convince her and bring Moroccan actresses so she could choose one to play her role. She wouldn’t accept that. That’s how she was able to choose to tell her story herself. 

And then I took the risk of shooting with the same characters for ten years without knowing how the film was going to end. Or when. I had no timetable for finishing the film so I had to create figurines so that if one of us was no longer there, the figurine could finish its story.

For me, trust is earned with characters who reveal themselves over time. Time is a great revealer. Once trust has been earned, it has to be protected and preserved, and to preserve it, we have to give our characters the distance they need. We mustn't force anything, but above all let things unfold organically, because everything shows on screen.

When I consider embarking on getting a film made, one of my first questions is “Why this film now?” So: why this film now?

This film now is because it's time to preserve memory, to reconnect with our past so we can focus on the future.

This film is there to show how having countless images everywhere today on social networks is not worth much if these images have no value. Sometimes the lack of images is much more important and thanks to that lack we can imagine and create many things.

Our industry seems very restrictive in terms of what a film is, particularly a nonfiction work, yet your movie is very innovative in both the subject and approach, but never at the sacrifice of character or emotion. How do you develop your own trust in the approach? 

For me, there is no cinema without emotion. Emotion comes out organically when we take the time to develop it with our characters. If emotion is present  then it doesn't need music or anything to reinforce it. Sometimes emotion is a deep stare, a gesture or even a leaf blown by the wind. I experimented with the documentary approach on my previous short films, taking time to work with non-professional actors, and I love how things progress and change and move forward through the time we take. For me, writing with light is cinema.

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Asmae El Moudir is a Paris- and Rabat-based director, screenwriter and producer. She has directed short documentaries for SNRT, Al Jazeera, BBC, and Al Araby TV, and her films have won awards at festivals worldwide. She completed the television documentary, The Postcard, in 2020. The Mother of All Lies is her theatrical feature film debut; it has been shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best International Feature and Nominated for the Independent Spirit, IDA and PGA Awards for Best Documentary.

The Mother Of All Lies synopsis: Young Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir wants to know why she only has one photograph from her childhood, and why the girl in the picture isn’t even her. She decides to explore the past and its mysteries by creating a handmade replica of the Casablanca neighborhood where she grew up. Slowly, with the help of family and friends, she starts to unravel the layers of deception and intentional forgetting that have shaped her life. The truth is hard to face, but in this sometimes surreal and strikingly inventive nonfiction film, El Moudir begins to draw what is real to the surface. (96m. Morocco/Egypt/Saudi Arabia/Qatar. Sales: Autlook)

Sundance Screenings
P&I: Sun, January 21, 8:00 pm - Holiday 2  
Mon, January 22, 12:15 pm - Prospector       
Wed, January 24, 2:30 pm - Holiday 3      
Sat, January 27, 3:30 pm - Redstone 7   
Sun, January 28, 5:00 pm - Gateway 6, SLC

Also available online for the public (Jan. 25-28) and credentialed press & industry (Jan. 24-28) on the Sundance website.