Cineuropa met with Belgian-Moroccan filmmaker Jawad Rhalib on the occasion of the premiere of his documentary Since I Was Born [+lee también:
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entrevista: Jawad Rhalib
ficha de la película] at Brussels’ Cinemamed, a film which, through the singular fate of Zahira, a little girl determined to pursue her studies despite the reluctance of her community, addresses the often thwarted destinies of children in the Moroccan High Atlas.

Cineuropa: What gave you the desire and the idea to look into Zahira’s fate?
Jawad Rhalib: A few years ago, I directed another documentary, Fadma: Even Ants Have Wings [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], in that same region of the High Atlas. I realised that these were villages completely isolated from the rest of the country, and that the situation of girls was particularly worrying. Most of them are taken out of school at the end of primary school because their families want to keep them at home. Given that boys often go to the city, someone needs to stick around and be helpful. The fate of these girls is first to work at home, and then to get married and essentially become handywomen for their in-laws.

It’s the influence of her teacher that changes Zahira’s life. She’s a wonderful young woman, who lives under complicated conditions, with a miserable salary, and yet works hard to change these children’s fates. She believes in school as a way to get out of poverty, she’s engaged. Zahira is influenced by her teacher and by what she reads, especially the story of Al Kahina, a Berber warrior queen who fought for her people’s freedom.

The film talks about tradition and education, but also about rurality.
Yes, the territorial and climate constraints are very important, that’s why I shot over four seasons, to show how difficult it is to reach the school in particular. Snow, rain, heat. Zahira travels 6 km each day to go to and come back from school. The village, like many others in Morocco, is completely isolated. Strangely, the 2023 earthquake, which caught up with them at the end of the film, was a tragedy but also an opportunity, because it allowed the authorities to see their living conditions. Finally, they were seen and taken care of.

How did you decide to show and explain this isolation?
Through images, of course, but also through time, by showing the long walks the girls took to go find some wood, to take care of the cattle. I absolutely wanted to reflect reality at my scale, to set up the lengths. They don’t scare me when they say something. The wait is very important, not much happens in this village, I had to set up the boredom. That is what the populations in these remote areas experience. In that way, it’s a story that seems universal to me, we could have told it in a village in Turkey or China.

What was the biggest challenge?
It’s always the same with documentaries, you have to convince partners, but a documentary isn’t a script, dialogue, sometimes it isn’t even mise-en-scène, you have to adapt to the people you are turning into characters, to their evolution. You also have to hold on over time. You have to go there, then go back there, everything here rested on the villagers’ commitment, they had to adhere to the project, including the village chief. We are still a foreign team, Belgians and Moroccans from the city, and one which is going to show, amongst other things, the misery in which these people are living. Everyone must do it with dignity. It’s writing that evolves. It is the characters that dictate the narration, including the end of the story. We thought we were done when Zahira passed her test to be able to go study. The very evening we returned to Brussels, the earthquake that devastated the region struck. There were many victims, some people died, including friends of Zahira’s, there was some damage. It was then obvious that we had to go back, to update the ending. I kept saying: I don’t know how the film will end. Working with the long duration of the documentary format is also moving forward into the unknown.