I wrote the film's dialogue first: I saw images in my head, but mostly I heard these young people talking, and that helped me write realistic dialogue.

You graduated from ENSAV in Toulouse in 2015 and are a film director. When did your first memories of cinema begin? Which artists made you want to get behind the camera?

My first desire for cinema was born thanks to a film festival, which took place in Salon-de-Provence, not far from the village where I lived. I used to go with my mother when I was in secondary school, then in high school, and I could discover art house films. At the same time, I started making little films for fun, like music videos with my girlfriends. When I went to high school, the idea became more and more serious, and I decided to study literature and cinema. I could mention Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch or even Wong Kar-wai, but I also really liked a more recent film, Gagarine, by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh. In it, I recognized things that I like in cinema, in this way of filming housing estates in a poetic way, different from what we can see on a daily basis.

How did the project for your first short film, The Truth, come about?

During my studies, I was assistant director on Dominique Cabrera's film Corniche Kennedy, shot in Marseille. Before the shoot, I accompanied the director to transcribe interviews, and I coached the young non-professional actors a little, because I had experience of the theater. Then, during the shoot, the producer asked me if I wanted to make a sort of "making of" of the film, so I offered to make a documentary about these young people, which was included in the DVD extras. Meeting them inspired me to write La Vérité, even though I didn't transpose their lives at all. There were different things that marked me, notably girls with strong characters whom I admired a lot, or boys with a sensitivity they couldn't admit to too much. It was this contradiction that made me want to write this story. Yet it took me years to write the script, and it was finally when I found a dictionary of untranslatable words that it clicked, imagining these words as a key to open an impossible dialogue.

The film will be able to be seen abroad: while it's about multiculturalism and common humanity, in the midst of all these different languages that don't necessarily understand each other, it makes a lot of sense to me.

In La Vérité, you work on language and the importance of words to tell the story of the friendship between two teenagers. How did the film's script come about?

I wrote the dialogue first: I could see images in my head, but mostly I could hear these young people talking, and that helped me write realistic dialogue. I really wrote what came to me from this confrontation between these two characters. The first scene I wrote was when the two of them meet for the first time and have this tense exchange, albeit with an underlying complicity. As I went along, I started thinking about how to stage the scene around that, because the script just looked like a twenty-minute conversation. I had to think about the staging, the body, and it was by having it read around me that I began to get feedback along those lines. The second step was to find the set: I wanted the film to be shot in Marseille, by the sea, because I wanted it to start in a housing estate and then go to the sea. Finding the location in particular helped me a lot, especially with the staircase you see in the film and the chasm scene. The setting was essential: there's a lot of language, but what's really important is what's left unsaid, which is why we worked a lot on the body and space in rehearsal. Finally, before shooting, we reread the script with the actors and actresses, which enabled us to make a vocabulary adjustment in their expressions.

Your actors Oumnia Hanader and Billel Meguellati were awarded the Prix d'interprétation at the Festival du court métrage d'Auch 2024. How did you get to know them and decide to work with them?

The casting director did some wild casting, as well as a call for applications via social networks, all the while using her database and her own knowledge. For the main characters, Billel himself applied, saw the advert and made a video introducing himself. As for Oumnia, it was a bit special because the first video I saw had been sent to my producer, but she was casting for a completely different film than mine. I thought she played very well, but I didn't know from that test whether she could play the character of Dounia. What's more, they were both older than I had imagined when writing the script: they were twenty-three and twenty-six, whereas I had envisaged younger characters. It was this detail that made me put them aside at the beginning, without eliminating them completely. When I couldn't find them, I ended up saying to myself that, since they were both older, maybe there was something to be done. When they met, they hit it off and confirmed that they were the right choice. They had a sincerity and closeness to their characters that made me feel they really understood them, and above all that they grasped the deeper meaning of the film, and that was very important. Oumnia, for example, was immediately interested in untranslatable words, and this played a big part in the interpretation of her character, who discovers Keny's sensitivity with wonder.

La Vérité won many awards at the Festival Premiers Plans d'Angers, including the Institut français des jeunes internationaux prize. What does this recognition represent?

Of course, it makes me very happy! The different awards mean that it's reaching different audiences, and I think that's great because, in this film, I wanted to be in a specific social milieu, while remaining universal. What's more, the international youth award is great, because we're talking about language, different cultures and young people, so the award is totally coherent. The film will also be able to be seen abroad: while it talks about multiculturalism and common humanity, in the midst of all these different languages that don't necessarily understand each other, it makes a lot of sense to me.

Following this award, the film may be shown in establishments of the French cultural network abroad. Do you think the story will resonate in the same way around the world?

It's very hard to say because I can't pretend to know if it's going to work everywhere the same way. I do think it will be different, especially if you're not familiar with France and Marseille's relationship with Algeria, as certain things won't resonate in a similar way. All the same, I've tried to achieve a certain universality in what these young people are trying to convey beyond words, so I really hope it can work too. In Lisbon, for example, it won the prize for best short film, so it must have spoken, and in Germany, where I was present, it seemed to resonate too.

What are your future projects? Do you already have in mind a desire for a feature film?

I have an idea for a feature-length documentary, which would continue to address the theme of language and the in-between. This was already important in La Vérité, where I tackled the in-between, between vulgarity and poetry, femininity and masculinity, France and Algeria.

I'm keen to explore this theme of finding the "middle ground", of the place we choose or don't choose to occupy in society, so I'm working on it...

In parallel, I also have a street theater company and we're in the early stages of creating our next show, which incidentally deals with another important theme for me and already present in La Vérité: that of the stereotypes and judgments we make on a daily basis about each other, or about ourselves.

I think it's important to deconstruct preconceived ideas that lock people into boxes, only further dividing society, and for me every artist has a responsibility in the image of the world they choose to disseminate, which is why I think my work will continue to move in this direction and always question our gaze.