INTERVIEW
Shocked by the video of a Yazidi slave fair, Caroline Fourest had the click to write a film. "I could hardly believe my eyes," she said at the microphone of Europe 1, Sunday, remembering the images, filmed from the inside by Daesh fighters, laughing while buying these Kurdish teenagers as if they bought animals.
Following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the journalist, guest of the program "There is not only one life in life", Sunday, needed to find a new way to express herself. "I had written a lot after the attacks, and I had to pour something out." The realization has imposed itself on her, through the history of the Kurdish fighters who fought against Daesh for five years, Kalashnikov in hand. "I had this desire for realization, but left it aside by sacrificing this dream to try to be useful in the public debate". With her project in mind, the journalist then put on the cap of screenwriter and director, giving birth to Sisters in Arms .
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In the footsteps of the Yezidi genocide
Caroline Fourest says that she first went to the Sinjar mountains, in northwest Iraq, in the footsteps of the genocide of the Yezidis (Kurdish monotheistic community). "I was walking in the world that I had imagined in my script," she recalls, evoking many strong moments. Alongside her partner, political scientist and Arabic speaker, Caroline Fourest then met the combatants of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). "They are very young and very radical," notes the director.
These meetings served to feed the scenario, written under the watchful eye of Patrice Franceschi, a reserve officer, former paratrooper and aviator, who had himself fought alongside the Kurds during the battle of Raqqa, in 2017. But for security reasons, the filming took place in Morocco.
Threatened by an Islamo-conspiratorial site
A filming far from Iraqi Kurdistan, of course, but not without risks. Threatened by an Islamo-conspiratorial site that sought to disrupt her work, Caroline Fourest had to be protected by plainclothes police. "It hasn't changed anything," she said, indicating that the filming location remained very secure.
Finally, the filming experience went as she had imagined, the emotions and the closeness as well. "In the end, we were part of the same family because we lived in the same world," she smiles.
"I wanted to shoot with the Peshmerga"
His team, mainly his producer and his distributor, however feared that this success would turn into drama. If Caroline Fourest was satisfied with her work, there was however one regret: that of not having been able to film in Iraqi Kurdistan. For his team, it was out of the question because it was too dangerous. "I was missing scenes of magnitude that I wanted to shoot with the Peshmerga," says the director, explaining that the Kurdish fighters had even promised to make available vehicles and bases. Ball in mind, so she takes her tickets and puts her distributor before the fait accompli.
"The colonel of the Peshmerga brought 27 armored vehicles into the desert, I was able to film real combatants that I inserted into a real fictional scene to pay tribute to them," lists Caroline Fourest. Released eight months ago, Sœurs d'Armes is widely downloaded in the Middle East, says Caroline Fourest. "My goal is reached," she says, while the film was a box office failure in France, with just under 85,000 admissions.