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After having already won two Palmes d'Or, the Dardenne brothers are again in the running for the highest distinction of the Cannes Film Festival. The young Ahmed is the dense and dramatic portrait of a 13-year-old boy who is becoming radicalized and plunged into terror. The subtlety and intelligence of the camera and the beautifully "embroidered" scenario of the Belgian filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne provoke both empathy and fright at this young person ready to commit the irreparable to make the "Purity" advocated by his imam. Interview.
RFI : You have titled your movie The young Ahmed . Was it difficult to find the name for the role of this young boy becoming a radical Islamist ?
Luc Dardenne : No, finding Ahmed's first name was not very difficult. It's a very common name and we called him Ahmed right away. Maybe because we were thinking about Hamlet. I do not know. It came like this.
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It is quite easy to detect and interpret outside signs of radicalization, for example, when Ahmed refuses to shake a woman's hand. But how did you go about filming the inner signs of deradicalisation ?
Jean-Pierre Dardenne : It's a bit of the film's bet. How to bring in this boy? A boy completely locked in on himself and fanatic. Fanatics think they are good. Even if they suppress people, they think they are doing it for good. For him it is good to meet this ideal of purity that the imam has inculcated in his head by also putting in his head this cousin who died in Syria. How to change someone who is so fanaticized? Because fanaticism is something that we ourselves have not really measured.
When we started to build our story - we wanted to see how we could get out of this fanaticism - we had a lot of trouble. The others try to make him change, they are benevolent with him, but we have the feeling that they are each time encountering a kind of wall, something impermeable, that can not be broken. It was the hardest for us. But, we also said that - even if it is not verbalized, even if Ahmed does not show that he has changed in contact with these people - what happens to him at the end of the film, we, we think that what he experienced with all the characters he met, it also served something for him to change.
For you, there are external signs that can be filmed and that show an inner change.
Luc Dardenne : For example, when he touches the veal on the farm. When he goes with the farmer to look for the calf in the barn and leads him to another pen. The fact that he touches it is a sign. He touches a living being. He caresses him a little, he does not give a blow. It's a gesture we liked a lot. Or, for example, when he lets the girl rub his cheek with a blade of grass. He is embarrassed, he does not want to, but, at the same time, he lets her do it.
So, there is something that comes into contact with life, the erotic life with the girl. The spectator, at this moment, he says to himself: well, the boy is still alive. He is still able to love life and not just be obsessed with the murder of his teacher, this association activist who gives evening classes and more for young people to help them with their homework. These are two things, two things that show that there is a change. And he can not cheat with that, because sometimes we see that our character is lying, he is in duplicity, but not with that. I think that with the girl, he is really touched.
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Many are worried about the return to Europe of jihadists - and their families - French, German, Belgian, British ... arrested in Syria. Have you designed your film as a contribution to the debate ?
Luc Dardenne : This is a famous question. I think we have to respect international law. So, we have to allow these children and their parents to come back, but also to be judged with regard to the parents. I do not know if our film can bring an element, a discussion on the de-radicalization of these people. We were not really interested in the subject, we were interested in our character. We thought, how can a kid who is caught in an ideology of death, how can he find life? That's what we tried to film with our camera: the life that comes back. If now, for example, there is an educator who sees our film and says to himself: it's complicated to find life, to come back to life when we went so far in the mortifying ideology. Maybe that can help and we bring something, not to the debate, but to help an educator, an educator, to try to understand a little what a young person caught in the ideology. Because, there will surely be jihadist children. I hope that it will be possible to manage to go back, to find life.
The law of God is above the laws of men, it is the justification of Ahmed when he decides to attack his teacher who, according to him, has become " impure " because he is married to a Jew. This justification of the law of God, does this only concern Islamists ?
Jean-Pierre Dardenne : The massacres committed in the name of religion, it does not happen only in the name of the fundamentalist version of the Muslim religion. Most religions have at some point in their will to completely dominate the lives of individuals and to direct their destiny from cradle to grave, promising them eternal life in the afterlife. It has always been a disaster. That is why in every liberal democracy, we must find a solution that is fragile and that we must therefore strive to defend is the separation of the State and the Church. And that we come to live in good intelligence. We in the film do not want to stigmatize a religion. It is the totalitarian and totalizing side of these religions that is formidable.
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