Interview

Clermont Festival 2024: Fatima Kaci, “being the voice of others is also suffering”

“

 I grew up between two languages. 

» With

The Voice of Others

, director Fatima Kaci, born in 1992 in France to Algerian parents, immerses us in the reality of a Tunisian interpreter living in Paris, in charge of translating the applicants' stories in a “neutral” way asylum during their hearing before the French administration. In competition at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, his Fémis graduation film amazes with the clarity of the insoluble issue: can we translate the tragic life of a person?

Fatima Kaci, French director of “The Voice of Others”, in competition at the 2024 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. © Siegfried Forster / RFI

By: Siegfried Forster Follow

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RFI:

The voice of others

, summarize your film for us in one sentence.

Fatima Kaci:

It's the story of an interpreter sent back to her own ghosts.

This is the story of a Tunisian interpreter working for the administration which processes asylum requests in France. How much “documentary” is in this fiction

?

Indeed, it is a very well-documented fiction. I constructed this character of the interpreter also from testimonies of professional interpreters also sometimes working in these institutions. The challenge was to fictionalize this character to try to best understand the problem of this woman. But all performers experience their profession in a very different way, so it remains a fictional character and my point of view on this reality.

Also read “Let’s go back”, to Algeria or France, questions Franco-Algerian filmmaker Nasser Bessalah at the 2024 Clermont-Ferrand Festival

In your film, several asylum seekers parade with their stories from Chad, Mali, Sudan, Syria... When you are the voice of others, do you still keep your own voice

?

In my film, I don't give the answer. In any case, this woman's entire journey shows us that her own voice always comes into conflict with the expectations of others, both the applicants, but also the institution, etc. This emotional journey of this performer will show us that being the voice of others is also suffering.

The body and language of Rim (magnificently played by Amira Chebli), the translator, oscillate between French and Arabic. You, as a director, how did you “translate” with the direction, the direction, the camera, the lighting, this back and forth between two languages

?

I grew up between two languages. So, my relationship with translation, and the issues linked to translation are very present in my personal life in many places. For me, the question of translation is a very complex question. It's not fair to find the right words to best convey the other's words. Translation also sometimes means feeling responsible towards others. It is also sometimes subject to speech, having power through speech or not.

Finally, it's all these things that I tried to film and capture with the staging. For example, the interview scenes. The staging directs our gaze, above all, it allows us to feel the unsaid, the silences and also the place of bodies. Because it is not only the voice of the interpreter that allows the other to hold, to exist during the interview. It’s also his body, his look. This woman interpreter is like a receptacle. She is at the same time a ghost, because she cannot make her own story exist, at the same time, she is the receptacle of the outside world which resonates within her.

“The voice of others”, by Fatima Kaci, in competition at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2024. © Sayonara Film / La Fémis

In the film, the administration gives the interpreter a sort of directive: To translate is not to interpret, is not to explain, but to simply render the words, without taking sides, while remaining “neutral”. Is it possible to remain neutral when we have an essential need for empathy to be able to translate

?

As a director, my role is also to interpret a reality, that is to say to take a look, a point of view. The character of Rim experiences the same issue. She is obliged to have a point of view on what is happening in a discussion, even when she is supposed to “translate”. For example, she understands that the questions asked are questions that will not allow the other to express themselves and truly exist. Yes, I think that translating is necessarily betraying when you are an interpreter.

Rim is not coincidentally where she is as a translator. She is Tunisian, but she also experienced difficult things in Syria. As an interpreter, she is aware of the problems faced by asylum seekers. Rim is also aware that to restore or transmit the “truth”, it is sometimes necessary to “play”. For you, is there a parallel between cinema and the asylum procedure

?

Yes, there is a parallel. In this device, in this procedure of the story, there is a staging, the questions are predefined. The film tries to show that stories will always be formatted in a certain way. So the challenge is not to tell the real story, but to tell a story that is audible to an institution. There are predefined boxes. But you can't ask a human being to fit their story into a box. This tension generates a lot of suffering on all sides, both on the side of the officer, on the side of the applicant and on the side of the interpreter.

There is a parallel with cinema, because there are issues of expected representation. So, to build an imagination around the “good” refugee, the one who would be legitimate because he would have experienced the persecution that we imagine. Rim finds himself at the heart of this machine even though it is this machine that also allowed him to be here and to be able to work and do this job. It is this contradiction that I wanted to explore in

The Voice of Others

.

You have a master's degree in cinematographic heritage and you worked in your dissertation on Newsreel, a collective of independent American filmmakers who worked on the war in Vietnam, decolonization, and the Black Panther. Does

The Voice of Others

fit into this history of cinema

?

What interests me is the relationship between politics and cinema. What pushes us to make films? What use can we make of a film as such a political tool and how do we find a form? In relation to this, the Newsreel collective is extremely interesting since these are films which also experiment aesthetically, which seek to find the most radical form. In my film, I assume very long periods of silence, I assume a certain rhythm. There are formal biases that can be frightening. Will a viewer last 30 minutes listening to people? I find that it is also through this formal requirement that we manage to avoid falling into hegemonic discourses, dominant discourses and to grasp complex things, political remarks. My film also takes a look at an institution. The goal was not to make a Manichean film, the institution is horrible and the poor asylum seekers and the poor interpreter, etc. But to show how individuals negotiate in a system. That's much stronger politically than making a film about speeches.

After this short film, you are in the process of directing your first feature film. What will the theme be

?

I continue to reflect on a journey of exile, the journey of an exiled woman. It will be a slightly more intimate film. A family story.

Also read: Clermont-Ferrand Festival 2024: What is a good short film and “female gaze”?

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