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Regarding her hometown of Casablanca, Leïla Kilani remembers the 1970s and 1980s, during which the culture of images in public spaces was rarely highlighted, when it was not outright banned. The movie director, who likes to define herself as «Moroccan-Parisian», tells Yabiladi that «the years of lead were accompanied by many prohibitions, including that of filming in the streets».
Hence, «going to the cinema or simply watching a film has always been a sacred ritual», with the political environment of those decades always in the background. «Love of cinema was so precious and marked by this rarity that these moments were precious and interesting to experience», the director of the film «Indivision», her second fiction feature film, told Yabiladi. She addresses crucial themes linked to climate justice, coexistence between communities and the urge of preserving the environment.
A pupil of French schools, Leïla Kilani grew up with two brothers and a sister, in a family from Tangier, where the story of her new cinematographic opus takes place. Her father was a civil servant, the head of a family that had a strong commitment to politics.
«All of this has marked me intellectually», declares the filmmaker who, in addition to the rare images, has always «devoured books» which she could get her hands on. «I was always under the impression that there was never enough to quench my thirst for reading», underlines the woman who has long been passionate about the writings of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Toni Morrison and Georges Perec.
Leïla Kilani is a filmmaker who is not interested in telling stories in a traditional way. She wants to create new worlds and experiences through her films. She believes that films should be more than just entertainment. They should also be a way to think about important issues. It is for this reason that Leïla Kilani is considering bringing her new feature film «Indivision», in partnership with the Moroccan Coalition for Climate Justice, to movie theaters in Morocco.
The idea will be to welcome new actors within the cinematographic synergy, especially those who question and work around climate issues. After a first national screening at the 20th Marrakech International Film Festival (FIFM, from November 24 to December 2, 2023), the objective will be to «attract the public, both as film buffs and citizens sensitive to the ecological issue».
The story takes place over the hills of Tangier, in the center of the forest where a dilapidated house stands: La Mansouria. Lina lives there with her father Anis, her grandmother Amina, and the housekeeper. The grandmother pushes her relatives to accept a deal to sell the property and become millionaires. But Anis, steadfast in his refusal to sell to property developers, even renounces his own stake in the land and donates it, for eternity, to birds, which fascinate him so much. Unfortunately, a fire ravages the forest, signaling the start of a series of events that question the role of humans within their environment.
«In Morocco, the film was well-received by the younger audience, mostly relating to the role of Lina. We thought of extending this experience, by launching debates. The idea would be to do in-depth work, beyond the film, in the form of a symbolic trial. The idea came after the screening of the film. We want to accompany the feature film, locally, by creating a space for debate. We had the idea of a distribution strategy, with an associative partnership, to invest in something that brings both love of cinema and citizen debate».
Creating debate beyond media discourse
Before going behind the camera, Leïla Kilani pursued higher education in France in history and economics. Her master's degree at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHSS) in France, then her master’s of research degree in Cairo, Eypt, was «a founding moment» for the rest of her career.
She emerged enriched by this academic experience, which led her to travel all the way to Asia, from Egypt to China, along the Silk Road. «This trip made me rediscover my Arabness, in particular thanks to the research I carried out on the literature of the 1930s», the director said.
She remembers it as a «founding step towards belonging to an Arab cultural world, with a relationship to a city where borders are only those that we impose on ourselves».
«Fundamentally marked» by her travels which lasted four years, Leïla Kilani discovered «freedom and happiness through her everyday life, in a heterogeneous and hybrid world». During her studies, Leïla Kilani also wrote articles as a freelance journalist.
Being from Tangier, the director kept an alternative view of the irregular migration phenomenon in the early 1990s. She declares being «very angry at media coverage of this subject», with a Western media discourse detached from reality and local societal complexities.
It was then that she decided to take a camera, to make what would become her first documentary, «Tanger, the dream of the burners» (2002). «I was already taking a lot of photos, images and sounds in this city. So, I wanted to write an uncompromising film. I sent it to the CNC in France, I received funds and I attempted an innocent, unconscious and ambitious opus, beyond the journalistic tone», she recalls.
«Around me, few believed in the possibility for me to move on to directing and make this first film. But I finally did it and since then, I have continued to have a visceral relationship with writing for images. I have kept this same intuitive stubbornness since my youth. Each film is my first time behind the camera and I don’t like to repeat what I’ve already done».
After a second documentary (‘Our forbidden places’, 2008), the director attempted the adventure of fiction for the first time, through her feature film «Sur la planche» (2011). Each time, she develops «an experimental vision of cinema, as a test tube». An approach that we also find in «Indivision».
«It is a childish relationship with the seventh art as a source of wonder and questioning, with the need for it to be a sandbox which serves to propose an aesthetic form, with the promise of being constantly in a process between creation and research», the director tells us.
«I don’t believe in an ideologization of cinema that would turn into a leaflet. As a spectator before becoming a director, I find that the films that have had an impact on me are those where poetry tells, in one way or another, a relationship to oneself and to the world. That’s always political. I think that commitment, in this way, means daring and freeing yourself, trying things and innovating in aesthetic forms».
Today, Leïla Kilani rightly believes that «we make films about ourselves». «My films tell my stories. They tell of my distress, my hopes. I am trying to find a cinematographic translation to all this, while also describing a certain Moroccan orality», indicates the woman who has always put her favorite city, Tangier, at the heart of her colorful stories.
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«There are cities that contain you, belong to you and transcend you. For me, it is Tangier, towards which I have an intense love relationship. I try to put my camera elsewhere; I wrote ‘Indivision’ to try it in Rabat, just for a change. But Tangier ended up catching up with me. So much the better, because it is an aesthetic city which has such intensity and a world-city cinematography that it is difficult to find elsewhere, to question the physical, graphic and cinematographic relationship at the border», underlines the director.
