MEDI1TV Afrique : #Chronique_culture / Interview avec la réalisatrice Hind Meddeb - 04/12/2024
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00:00Welcome to Medea TV and Zoom in this chronicle about a passionate director who will take you to the Hindmedeb Sudan,
00:19which was in the official competition of the 21st edition of the International Film Festival of Marrakech.
00:25Hindmedeb, it's a pleasure and an honor to be with you.
00:30Hind, thank you very much for accepting our invitation.
00:33Your film is called Sudan, remember, but in Arabic, Sudan and Rally.
00:37It's my favorite title.
00:39As I was saying, we want to tell you about Hind and Rally,
00:43because it's a fascinating, beautiful film where there is poetry.
00:47First, a feeling about his selection for the official competition.
00:52For me, it's a very, very special moment, because Morocco is my country of heart.
00:59It's the country of my mother, where I spent almost all my holidays since I was born,
01:05where I lived at certain times.
01:07And so it's a festival that is different from all the other festivals I've been able to do before,
01:14because here I feel at home and I'm happy that Moroccans can finally discover a film that I made.
01:23And also, for another reason, I'm here in Marrakech with Shajan,
01:27who is Sudanese, who is the main character of the film.
01:31And Shajan, I went to her country, I followed her,
01:35and when she arrived in Marrakech, what she told me touched me a lot.
01:39She told me, you came to see my country, now I come to see your country.
01:43And she was also very, very moved.
01:45So for us, it's mostly more than the question of the fact that it's a big festival,
01:52that it's important for the film, it's important from a personal point of view.
01:57So precisely, Hind, we feel your involvement in this documentary,
02:02which is carried by this Arab-Sudanese poetry.
02:07Was it a choice from the beginning to put these words,
02:10this strength, this fervor in these young Sudanese?
02:14The story of this film is a series of events that are embedded in each other
02:22and that made this film come to life.
02:24Nothing was planned.
02:26And at the same time, there was, instinctively,
02:30everything I filmed and what makes us get to this film.
02:35And it was, let's say, a great attention to everything that was going on
02:41that made this film come to life.
02:43But above all, what I wanted to say is that it's a film, it's a story of friendship.
02:47And I had not planned that there would be poetry.
02:51I had absolutely nothing planned.
02:53I made a film before, called Paris-Stalingrad,
02:56which I also shot for personal reasons,
02:59because there were thousands of refugees in a neighborhood
03:02where I lived for a very long time, next to the Stalingrad subway.
03:05The film is called Paris-Stalingrad.
03:07And a situation of great injustice and great violence
03:10that was done to these exiled people who were asking for political asylum in France,
03:14who were coming from countries at war.
03:16And when I shot Paris-Stalingrad,
03:18I made friends with Sudanese, with whom I am still friends today.
03:22And if I made this film, it was thanks to a poet called Hassan Yassin,
03:26who lives in Paris.
03:28And when we finished shooting Paris-Stalingrad,
03:30when we presented the film, the revolution began in Sudan.
03:32And my Sudanese friends in Paris told me,
03:34but you have to go see our country, the doors of our country are opening.
03:37After the fall of Omar al-Bashir,
03:39a very closed country in the outside world for 30 years.
03:42And they told me, we are going to help you,
03:44we are going to give you the coordinates of our family and our friends.
03:46You will not be alone.
03:48And so I took the plane and I went to Sudan
03:53and I arrived in the middle of the democratic sitting in Khartoum.
03:56And there I literally dived into a bath of beauty,
04:00because the Sudanese have set up a utopian city
04:03around the army headquarters
04:05to ask the Madaniya, a citizen state,
04:07that is, to ask that their country be returned to them,
04:09which had been confiscated from them for 30 years by a dictatorship
04:12which at the same time plundered resources, created wars,
04:15massacred people in the name of a radical Islam
04:19who could not stand that there could be other religions in the country.
04:26There are animists, there are Christians in Sudan,
04:28there are 500 different tribes.
04:30So I really dived and discovered this poetry.
04:34And it was after the editing that we decided to build the film
04:39around poems and songs.
04:41So Hidna, maybe one last question,
04:44I was saying, we hear you in this Sudan,
04:51but your documentary is really touching.
04:56We are very moved, we are very moved.
04:58We discover, we Moroccans, this African country,
05:04we discover this youth.
05:06Maybe this question about this youth today,
05:11this youth of this 21st century and this desire to see things change.
05:16I would start by saying that what touched me the most
05:19is the Arabic language in Sudan.
05:21And we have this Arabic language in common.
05:23And that's what's very beautiful about this space,
05:26from Morocco to Iraq, we share the same language.
05:29And we share the same love for poetry.
05:31And that's what makes us special.
05:33And I think that we, people from Morocco to Iraq,
05:37we have to get closer to each other
05:40to create a real space.
05:42For me, that's the future of this region.
05:46This language that we have in common,
05:48and we don't put enough things in common.
05:50When I arrived in Sudan, I recognized myself
05:53in the beauty of Sudanese poetry,
05:55in the beauty of the struggle of these young Sudanese,
05:57in their hope of having a better life,
06:00in their desire and their passion for freedom.
06:03And I, who was born and grew up in France,
06:05the French Revolution has always been,
06:08it was taught to us,
06:10it has always been like that in a corner of my head.
06:12And the French Revolution gave rise to great literature.
06:15And Victor Hugo is a child of this revolution,
06:17even if he arrives much later.
06:19And he wrote a poem that I always had in mind,
06:22which came to me in a second time,
06:27after seeing the power of Sudanese poetry,
06:29where people recite poetry
06:31as if it were a question of life or death.
06:34And Victor Hugo, in a poem he wrote
06:37to defend himself in court against an attack,
06:39because he did not stop being attacked,
06:41and he was also a political man,
06:42and sometimes even politically,
06:44he responded with poetry, as in the film.
06:46And so it's a poem where he says,
06:48because the word we know is a living being,
06:51the hand of the thinker trembles and vibrates when writing it.
06:55And that's what I saw in action in Sudan.
06:59So I would say that the Sudanese are the children,
07:02are the Victor Hugo of the 21st century.
07:05And they are also those who show us the way.
07:10I think it's not just a film about Sudan,
07:13it's a universal film about the desire for freedom,
07:16the desire also to recover its country.
07:23All these countries that are confiscated from the population in Africa,
07:28when we look at the current situation,
07:31Syria has been completely destroyed,
07:33Iraq has been completely destroyed,
07:35Yemen is still at war,
07:36Libya is still at war,
07:38in a catastrophic situation.
07:40And all these countries that I knew well,
07:42that I crossed with my father and my mother,
07:44my mother lived in Damascus,
07:45I knew Syria before the war,
07:47my father raised me by telling me about the thousand and one nights,
07:50the evening while I was sleeping,
07:51and I always had in mind this image of Baghdad,
07:54of Harun al-Rashid,
07:56who disguises himself by praying at night,
07:58and who walks in his city to hear what his people say about him.
08:01So I grew up with all these myths,
08:03and I have the feeling that since I was born,
08:06there has been a meticulous destruction of these places,
08:09which are the cradle of civilization,
08:11and let's never forget that Sudan is also the country of the pharaohs.
08:15And we always talk about Egypt,
08:17but there are pyramids in Sudan,
08:19and a civilization that is 10,000 years old.
08:22There were women who were queens,
08:24the Kandakats,
08:25so 10,000 years before Jesus Christ,
08:27the Kandakats,
08:28were women who ruled the kingdom of couches,
08:31it was in Sudan.
08:32And these women repelled the Roman invasions.
08:35So it's not surprising that even today,
08:37Sudanese women are still so powerful,
08:39and that they were,
08:41how can I say,
08:42at the forefront of this revolution.
08:44And it is above all a feminist revolution
08:46to which I attended,
08:48and that's why I was very touched.
08:51Yes, Madam, thank you very much.
08:53I know that we can stay with you for hours,
08:55given the passion and love that you carry,
08:57in any case,
08:58for what we saw in this film.
09:01So, Sudan, remember,
09:03Sudan, ya ghali,
09:04because as I told you...
09:05Sudan, ya ghali,
09:07ya ard al hurriya.
09:09It's a song that starts like that.
09:10And as Sudan, ya ghali,
09:11was introducible in French or English,
09:14I chose the title
09:15Sudan, remember us,
09:17in English,
09:18because it is the reference to the last poem of the film.
09:20So if you go to see the film,
09:21you will understand the title of the film.
09:23Thank you very much, Hede.
09:24Madam, thank you.
09:25And thank you, dear viewers,
09:27for your loyalty.
09:28Stay with us.
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