The sea in the distance: “The land of welcome, our ‘at home’, is the others, it is not a place”
Saïd Hamich Benlarbi signs a beautiful film on exile, with Ayoub Gretaa, Anna Mouglalis and Grégoire Colin. Encounter.
Nour, 27, emigrated to clandestine in Marseille. With his friends, he lives small traffic and leads a marginal and festive life … But his meeting with Serge, a charismatic and unpredictable cop, and his wife Noémie, will upset his existence. From 1990 to 2000, Nour loves, aged and clings to his dreams.
If Said Hamich Benlarbi is best known as a producer, thanks to his collaborations with Nabil Ayouch (Much Loved2015), Philippe Faucon (The harkis2022) or Steve Achiepo (The sandman2023), he also built a career as a solid director: in 2018, his Back to Bollènewas appointed to the Louis-Delluc prize for the first film. Four years later, his short The departure was selected in multiple festivals around the world: Rotterdam, Palm Springs, Cleveland, Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble … before being appointed to César. He released his second feature this week, The sea in the distancethat he presented us during the last Sarlat festival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnkai-8lzjm
The sea in the distance: a melo as heartbreaking as luminous (critic)
Tell exile
“From the start, I wanted to try to make this feeling of exile feel. It is something that is a bit intangible. Exile is how we build an identity on the long time. If I had chosen just a given moment, filmed how we manage this or that problem, on someone who had just happened, on immigration, it would have been another subject … I, what interested me, was really to tell this feeling over a period of several years, because that’s how it is built. importance.
Very quickly came this desire for a romantic. There was also this almost literary aspect, with this idea of chaptering. The film, I built it a little like a learning novel. With a perception of time which is not homogeneous. There may be very strong ellipses or stretch scenes. It is not easy to get into someone’s life and see what the memory of a life would be. Sometimes we have very precise memories, sometimes we forget several months. One of the references was Sentimental education by Gustave Flaubert. Because there was also this desire to tell the characters by their intimate, how they manage to get out of it with the big story.“”
An inspired title
“I like rather simple titles, and this one came to me naturally because in exile, there is something of the distance, from the distant, the horizon. This metaphor came to me very Quick, I really liked what it said, with this reference to the Mediterranean Sea, in Marseille. All that the sky allows (1955) Douglas Sirk or Far from Paradise (2002)from Todd Haynes.
All the others are called Ali (1974) of Fassbinder was also really important when you started working the image. There are lots of melos, the jumps, We loved it so much (1974) from Ettore Scola … with whom there are similarities, I wanted to register in this legacy there. Recently, I really liked The children of othersfrom Rebecca Zlotowski, who a priori has nothing to do, but which I perceived as a contemporary rewriting of the melo. “
The children of others: the most beautiful film by Rebecca Zlotowski (critic)
Find the ideal hero
“”Ayoub Gretaahe is known in Morocco because he has made a successful series (Maktoub, 2022). He had never really played in the cinema. It took me a long time to find it. As the film has a form of romantic, mixing memories of the feeling of exile, which tells something of both melancholy and sometimes festive, someone had this mixture, this ambivalence. Ayoub, he had this look that could be very bright, and his beautiful smile, too, but at the same time he has something melancholy in the eyes.
Like the film, it is a bit of a sentimental education, an initiatory journey where the main character exists a lot thanks to the others, I needed someone who has this ability to play while listening. It is very difficult to ask an actor not to do much. He really has this sensitivity. It is very permeable to others.
I realized one thing by writing, it is that the more we give common concerns to the characters, the more singular they are. If we show Nour laughing, being jealous or loved someone, it will exist as a person. It may be banality, but associated with building my character in time, in what makes everyday life, it offered him a personality. It is also a question of dosage, of course.
And take care of the supporting roles
“Overall, the cast was long since we did Paris, Marseille, Morocco and Algeria. Except for Anna Mouglalis And Grégoire Colinwho said yes very quickly. They were very important because they allow the film to evolve towards something more melodramatic, more fictional. It was necessary very charismatic actors who form like that an almost iconic couple, who will tip the main character and the film towards something different. Afterwards, the others, it was a case by case. The actor who plays Houcine, Omar BoulakirbaI had met him on Philippe Faucon’s film, The harkisand I loved this work with him. I already had it in mind when I wrote the script.
Obviously, the film is told from a male point of view, I didn’t want to cheat with that. But to build this character, I wanted to surround him with a constellation of other just as complex beings, and in particular women. The role of the mother, the best friend, the wife … It seemed important to me to write each character in her complexity. I like, in writing, always compensate for a character, try to understand the ambivalence behind the first. In this type of film where there is a kind of initiation journey, where the character meets many other people and feeds on their discussions, their life experiences … it seemed crucial to take care of each them.
It obviously works for Serge (Grégoire Colin). You might think at first glance that it is like this or like that, we almost start with a cliché, we tell ourselves that he will play the ‘Nasty cop’and then we understand his pain. And then it allows you to open on Italian immigration to Marseille. To play with this heritage there.
I like when the characters say they have on their hearts, that is very beautiful in the melodrama where the feelings are exacerbated. It allows us to say that the secondary characters exist, and that is at the heart of the film: how a character is built with others. In the end, the land of welcome, our ‘at home’it’s the others, it’s not a place. We are at home because we are surrounded by people we love and we are loved. For me, the secondary characters are super important. I needed that they could express themselves properly, and that they could live as they understand it. Noémie’s speech (the character of Anna Mouglalis)it’s almost a profession of faith. She says that she is proud of her choice of life, that she will continue. “
Go from production to realization
“Sometimes you have the impression that production and staging are almost trades ‘opposite’that one cannot go from one to the other. But personally, I have a vision of production which is very artistic. I really think that one and the other can be intimately linked. Working with great directors like Nabil Ayouch or Leyla Bouzid, it allows you to learn lots of things: writing, tray experiences, all kinds of things. All these productions were super important to me, it made me want to make a first film, Back to Bollèneand a short film called The departure. We feed on everything we are. “
Raï, ideal music to reconcile melancholy and festive spirit
“Music was super important from the start of The sea in the distance. Raï, already I listen to it a lot. As I have personally experienced an exile, it is something that creates a strong emotion in me. I believe that the relationship of all exiles to music is very strong. If you speak to Portuguese who left to live far from their home in Fado, they will immediately be moved. Argentine tango is filled with this kind of primitive emotion, this relation to what we have left, to what we have lost.
Raï has this sublime thing to be both festive music and extremely melancholy music. It is exactly in this sense that I wanted to introduce the film, I did not want music to be a contribution, but that it was in the daily life of the character. Not to mention that it was music that exiled in Marseille, which has lived a lot. There were everywhere there in the 1990s, it said something about that time, in addition to giving a color to the very strong film. Let’s say that I needed the rai to collect some ideas. “
