Interview with Ismaël Ferroukhi.
How did you get the idea for Le Grand Voyage? Is it related to any personal experience?
What was it that appealed to you in this story? This trip to Mecca was an ideal opportunity to put two characters in a car that – though father and son – are the total opposite of each other. It was also an opportunity to force them to communicate. In every day life, this confrontation would not have been possible since they would spend most of the time avoiding one another. In a journey situation the two characters can no longer avoid each other – they cannot escape the confrontation. They can’t cheat anymore.
Both your characters are in an unstable situation as regards the so-called “integration”: Réda is stuck between his roots and his French identity, and the father gives the impression of not being able to master the language.
What does the traditional Mecca pilgrimage mean to you? For me the pilgrimage does not come down to a mere “pilgrimage to Mecca”: the pilgrimage starts the day you leave your house and undertake the journey. The latter is an integral part of the pilgrimage. When the father explains why he has chosen to drive there, we understand that it is essential for him to physically feel the difficulties related to the trip. That is the outcome of his faith. Only a car journey – where every second counts – can allow him to accomplish his inner journey.
Even though the film could be described as a road-movie, it is more about the conversations behind closed doors in changing places.
This expedition is also an initiatory journey for both father and son. At the end the father admits “I learnt a lot form that journey” to which the son replies “me too.” Both characters learn a lot. I did not want to give the impression that only Réda discovers his own culture. In my opinion, father and son are like two points that end up meeting. It is therefore as much of an initiatory journey for Réda as it is for his father. Moreover the father’s progression is an integral part of the pilgrimage. Beyond that I wanted I also wanted to address both the young people from immigrant descent and older Muslims, that have arrived in France a while ago.
You give very little information, whether social or psychological about the characters, which seems to isolate them even more.
You never pass judgement on the characters: everyone behaves according to their own motivation, without you casting any moral light on them. I certainly did not want to take any side. They both have a defendable position. I made sure I did not pass judgement on their behaviour and I notably made sure that one shot would not say more than another. Throughout the movie I tried to keep the characters at a distance.
How do you see the character of Mustapha? One can’t help but feel that he plays a mediator role between the father and the son.
What part is the old woman that they meet by the road, meant to play? She is a ghostly, almost spectral apparition. For me she embodies a permanent threat that is looming on this journey. She is also part of that journey. There is a surreal side to her that makes her close to the father’s spiritual world. He actually understands her while Réda thinks she is a crazy witch.
When father and son find themselves in the Middle East the balance in their relationship changes: the father knows the linguistic codes, while the son is completely lost. Réda can no longer tell his father “you can’t read!” as he used to! He is now the one to be left out, all the more so that he is not on a pilgrimage: he discovers a world he knows nothing about, while his father is completely at ease.
The dramatic structure is very pure: you often resort to ellipses, which blur the perception of geographic borders and the passing of time. I wanted to distance myself from the contemplative attitude related to the journey and really focus on the two characters: their inner evolution was much more interesting for me than their geographic one. I wanted to show that the real outcome of the journey was when Réda’s respect for his father turned into love, regardless of where they were located or at which stage of the journey they stood. Even if I had worked really hard on checking the locations in all the countries where we were shooting. In fact I granted a lot of importance to the locations before we started the movie and when I had all the setting elements in hand, I wanted to get rid of them and avoid aesthetic temptation at all cost.
What do you have to say about the soundtrack?
How did you choose the actors? When I started writing the script, about six years ago, Cedric Kahn told me about Nicolas Cazalé – whom he had auditioned for Roberto Succo – Cédric said he corresponded perfectly to Réda. I watched the trial Nicolas had done for the movie and realized that Cédric was completely right! But as it took me five years to bring the movie together, I was worried that as he grew older, he would not correspond to the character anymore. I organized a casting – though deep down I knew the part was Nicolas’. Besides, as soon as I saw him again, I just knew for a fact that he had to play Réda. As for the father, I started looking for a actor in France, but I was then worried I could yield to the caricature of the Arab father who has been in France for a long time. When I met Mohamed Majd in Morocco, he obviously was the character. The two actors and myself then formed a united trio that literally carried the film.
Is it the first time a film is shot in Mecca? Yes indeed. On top of that we shot during the pilgrimage! But it proved to be extremely tricky as the authorization we had obtained from the Saudi Arabian Embassy was not worth a thing once we got there. The local authorities are used to television crews that shoot standard pictures in a very short time, and not to a cinema crew that will shoot the same scene two or three times.
Did face any other difficulties? In Serbia for example we had to respect the curfew related to the Primes Minister’s assassination. In the Middle East, the Iraq war had just started. And in Turkey we really had a hard time trying to get authorization to shoot inside the Blue Mosque or at the Bulgarian border. Luckily our Turkish producers were standing and fighting by our side. I felt like we were lucky to get away with it every time. It only reinforced our determination though. We also witnessed some miracles. For example we were meant to shoot a snow scene in Bulgaria. As I knew it had not snowed there at all I rewrote the scene, changing the snow into rain. On the very same night of our arrival in Bulgaria it started snowing really hard and the following morning the landscape was completely immaculate, covered in two meters of snow! We could then shoot the scene exactly as I had imagined it.
What was your reaction when you received the prize for best film début in Venice? It was both a magic and moving moment. When you receive such a prestigious prize after five years of struggle to bring a film together you can only be overwhelmed with joy! This prize filled me with a lot of hope.
Was it totally unexpected? Yes it was. After the screening of the film at Venice, and the warm welcome it received, I went back to Paris. Then when they called me back the day before the award, for a while I could not believe it! It really was magic. The night before the award ceremony I was the happiest of men. I wanted to share the prize with the whole team behind the movie and particularly Nicolas Cazalé and Mohamed Majd.
Le Grand Voyage will be released in the UK on October 14th.
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