Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania squeezed a six-week shoot for her next film Mimesis (working title) into her busy festival and awards run for docudrama The Voice Of Hind Rajab.
“I did Venice and Toronto [with Hind Rajab], then went back from Toronto on the plane directly to the set, and we started shooting,” Ben Hania tells Screen at the Doha Film Festival. “We had constraints that we had to shoot in September, otherwise we had to give back some funds.”
Set in 1990s Tunisia, Mimesis follows a woman who wants to stop the new imam from turning her family mausoleum into a mosque. After meeting a cameraman and starting a film on the mausoleum’s patron, she begins investigating the origins of a cult.
Filming began in the south of France in mid-September, before moving to Tunisia, wrapping at the end of last month. It reunites Ben Hania with regular collaborators, producer Nadim Cheikhrouha of Tanit Films and France-based sales firm The Party Film Sales.
Tunisian actors Lyne Ben Brika, Selim Chebbi, Riadh Aloui Nahdi, Rim Riahi and Fatma Ben Saidane lead the cast.
Ben Hania had been working on the film for several years with Cheikhrouha, pausing development to make Hind Rajab.
Festival stops
Hind Rajab opened the inaugural Doha Film Festival last week. It is the latest stop on an extensive festival tour, which started with an emotional Venice launch, where it won the silver jury prize, and multiple subsequent audience awards, from both larger (San Sebastian) and smaller (La Roche-sur-Yon) film festivals. It is Tunisia’s entry for the best international feature category at the Oscars and is nominated for best European film at the European Film Awards in January.
Based on real events from January 2024, the film depicts the attempts of Palestinian Red Crescent volunteers to rescue six-year-old Hind Rajab, trapped in a car under fire by the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza.
Given its subject matter, Ben Hania was attentive to a distinct reception from an Arab festival audience, but she says she has noticed “no major difference” from how audiences from other parts of the world have responded.
“I felt that the movie is above culture and language,” says the director. “It reached people almost in the same way.”
A big team from the film came to Doha, including producers Cheikhrouha and Odessa Rae; key cast Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Clara Khoury and Amer Hlehel; and the real Palestinian volunteers portrayed in the film.
Wissam Hamada, mother of the late Rajab, also attended the festival. “It was important not only for her, but for me,” says Ben Hania of Hamada’s Doha attendance. “Because she’s part of the movie – we see her at the end.”
The director says Hamada has not yet seen the film, as “emotionally she’s not ready”, but notes her warm reception in Doha. “She told me, ‘I need to be in the Q&A to see and talk to people’. For her, it’s a kind of comfort seeing all those people sharing her feelings and grieving.”
The film uses the audio of Rajab’s calls with the Red Crescent, which Ben Hania played live into the headsets the actors were wearing on set. “We shot it almost like a documentary,” says Ben Hania. “[The actors] weren’t performing, they were living the moment.”
Distribution
Although Hind Rajab received many distribution offers for international territories, the US deal proved more complicated, leading to Elizabeth Woodward’s Willa, an executive producer on the film, to take the rights. Willa is opening the film theatrically in the US on December 17, and Ben Hania will be in the US to support the release.
Ben Hania hopes as many US cinemas as possible will book the film, pointing to the many audience awards the film has won around the world. “If those cinemas like their audience, they should programme the movie, because obviously audiences like the movie,” she says.
High-profile figures including Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Alfonso Cuaron and Jonathan Glazer joined the film as executive producers shortly before its Venice launch. Palestinian-American comedian Mo Amer, also in Doha, is talking to the team about taking a similar role, and Ben Hania has already done a video-linked Q&A with Moonlight director Barry Jenkins.
Reliving a film for six months is gruelling for any awards season participant but Ben Hania says she doesn’t feel she needs any escape.
“I found meaning in my job as a filmmaker by doing [Hind Rajab],” she says. “This is so precious. What makes you weak and crazy is when you don’t have meaning, you feel this helplessness. This is the other way around. It was emotionally very difficult, but it’s something that keeps me going, and gave me meaning.”
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