07/03/2011

Kadija Leclère is currently in the middle of shooting her debut feature, The Bag of Flour. An actress by training, she made her name as a casting director, working on films like The Barons [+see also:
film review
trailer
Interview with director and actress of…
interview: Nabil Ben Yadir
film profile], Mr Nobody [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jaco Van Dormael
interview: Jaco Van Dormael
film profile] and Illegal [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Olivier Masset-Depasse
film profile]. Tempted by the idea of directing, she self-produced a debut short in 2002 (Camille), but it was in 2007 that she made her break as a director with her first professional short Sarah.

Like , The Bag of Flour echoes the director’s experiences. It tells the story of a studious 10-year-old girl brought up in Belgium, who is torn away from her environment by her father and left in Morocco. There, she has to learn everything again, from the language to traditions, and social codes dictating that little girls should learn to knit and not read.

Having grown into a teenager, she is torn between the mapped-out destiny that Moroccan society seems to impose on her and the hope of a new, emancipated life in Europe. Although the director lived for two years in these conditions, in the film she explores what she could have become if she hadn’t had the opportunity to return quite quickly to Belgium.

The cast is particularly enticing. Sarah is played by young Hafsia Herzi (discovered in The Secret of the Grain [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Hafsia Herzi
film profile]), who stars alongside great actress Hiam Abbas and Smaïn (recently seen in Alain Tasma’s TV drama Harkis).

Shooting, which started on February 14 in Belgium, will wrap in Morocco on March 23. The €2.2m film is produced by Compagnie Cinématographique Européenne for Belgium (in collaboration with Eyeworks in Flanders), Tchin Tchin Production for France, and Sahara Productions in Morocco. It has received backing from the Belgian French Community Film and Audiovisual Centre, the VAF, Bruxellimage, RTBF and the Moroccan Film Centre.

(Translated from French)