Animalia by Sofia Alaoui: “I have things to say and I want to be heard, not just because I’m an Arab woman”

Who said that in the middle of August there was nothing at the cinema? This Wednesday 9 is out Animaliathe first feature film by Sofia Alaoui, a young Moroccan director to follow closely. His first film It doesn’t matter if the animals die had already won the César for best short film in 2020.

Animalia, what is it about?

Animalia takes place in Morocco, where supernatural events plunge the country into a state of emergency. Increasingly disturbing phenomena suggest that a mysterious presence is approaching…

The relationship of men with nature and with others is upset. Rich and poor, men and women find themselves in the same boat and can’t do much in the face of the roaring universe.

Only, Itto, a young woman of modest origins tries to join her bourgeois in-laws cross Morocco. Forcing him to open his eyes to the world around him, his journey will be paired with an introspection where the universe and faith will eventually come together, forming one…

“A new generation of Arab and Maghreb filmmakers” moving away from realistic cinema ” dedicated to the West »

In French cinemas it is still rare to see contemporary genre cinema from Arab countries or North Africa. Movies often of the world » are calibrated for address social issuesthanks to realism. Sofia Alaoui wanted to distance herself from this norm, like other young Arab and North African filmmakers:

I left with the desire to do a film about my companyBut I didn’t want to make a social realism film. For example, I’m a fan of Asian cinema because use the supernatural question the company.

I think there is a new generation of emerging Arab and North African filmmakers who no longer want to make realistic social films, on the one hand, because we feel it these films are dedicated to the West and not to our countries.

As a young Moroccan director, Sofia Alaoui didn’t want to be locked up in a box « Shocking films for Arab women » : “I’m not a diversity box”she says: ” I have things to say and I want to be heard, not just because I’m an Arab woman. »

Do not criticize religion but capitalism and dogmas

According to Sofia Alaoui, in Morocco (as elsewhere), the “practice of religion” is sometimes just a facade, which hides a cult of money. This obsession with profit is particularly reflected in total disconnection from the world, from Nature – in other words, from God :

I think that whatever our horizon, Muslim or non-Muslim, there is a way of being in each of us closed in certainties. The prism through which I question society is Morocco and Islam because these are the codes I know. But I think we are all stuck in rigid ways of thinkingwhich give us the impression of having the absolute truth.

Animalia undermines the Islamophobic and racist stereotype present in many North African or Arab films released in France, where Muslim characters are presented as more “emancipated” having abandoned their faith in favor of an individualist and capitalist ideology. In this regard, the director confides: “I’m tired of this same cliché: Muslim characters are presented as negative, and they only find freedom when they adopt a Western way of thinking, which would be synonymous with modernity. I don’t think it’s modernity » and goes on:

For me it was very important not to make a shock film to be shock. The film questions things, especially religious ones, but always with benevolence. Perhaps Western audiences will appreciate my film less, but I didn’t try to make a film for festivals.

Thanks to her benevolence, her mastery of the script and the staging, the director questions the way in which capitalism exploits faith to put it at the service of its material interests. Voyage political, intimate and sensory, Animalia tell the reunion with a metaphysical and profound faithborn of awe at the unfathomable and sublime magic of the universe.

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