Competing in Bergamo Film Meeting ahead of its release in France on 17 June, Pieces of a Foreign Life [+lee también:
entrevista: Gaya Jiji
ficha de la película] - the second feature film by the French-naturalised Syrian-born director Gaya Jiji, tells the story of Selma, a woman who has fled the war in Syria, leaving her son and husband behind. When she arrives in Bordeaux, she’s forced to work illegally while fighting for the right to asylum and fighting to find her son.

Cineuropa: It’s becoming harder and harder to make films about immigration, because it’s the theme of the century in Europe. In some sense, Selma, in your film, is the paradigm of all refugees. But you also wanted to show her for the woman that she is, with her right to re-appropriate her identity, her history.
Gaya Jiji: It’s true that immigration is becoming a hot topic at the minute. But what I really wanted to do with this film was to explore that subject through melodrama, a sentimental drama; through intimacy. And I also wanted to show things from a very different viewpoint than we’re used to experiencing in films about exile. It was about making a film to say that love becomes the land we’re looking for, love can become our homeland. And even when we’re exiled, we still have our feelings, our desires, our desire to be in love.

The film’s French title, L'étrangère [literally, The Stranger] references strangeness and the concept of invisibility. The heroine is treated as if she’s invisible by French people, but she’s also treated that way by the Syrian community, too.
For the entire first part of the film, she’s invisible to other people, which is the case for all exiled people. She’s taken in by a Syrian family, but they have certain conditions. She can’t do everything she wants, she doesn’t have the right to do everything she wants, because she’s a woman. The more obstacles people create for her, the further she advances. But the key point for me was that it’s the relationship with the lawyer which makes her visible, because he’s the only one who tells her she’s brave to have embarked on that long journey. No-one else says that to her. Her mother makes her feel guilty, sometimes her son does too, despite all the sacrifices she’s made. Whereas he’s the only one who tells her: "You’re a brave woman", and that’s really the thing that makes her visible.

It’s nonetheless a melodrama which denounces the perverse inner workings of the "Dublin Regulation" and French bureaucracy, which constantly throws down obstacles in her path. In other words, European policies on migration and asylum.
And in fact, at the time when the film is set, it was actually easier to be granted asylum. I found there was something hypocritical and absurd about the Dublin Regulation, which not many people are familiar with, apart from those who work in the field, because it’s something that all countries within the European Union adhere to. When these people arrive in countries where they’re really not wanted, like Hungary or Bulgaria, they’re forced to have their fingerprints taken, in the knowledge that when they arrive in other EU countries, like France, Germany or Sweden, it will make things harder for them. And I also wanted to show how cruel it is to ask someone to leave a part of their body somewhere and how that part of their body will end up working against them. And that’s why she deforms her fingerprints at a certain point in the story. She’s not going to let them be used against her.

You chose Zar Amir for the lead role, an actress, director and producer, as well as an Iranian activist and refugee in France.
When I was writing the film, it was a huge question that always played on my mind: which actress is going to play this part? And over a number of years, which is how long it took to write the film, I even made a list of all the actresses in the Arab world. I couldn’t find an actress who fit the idea I had of Selma, until I saw Ali Abbasi’s film, Holy Spider [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
entrevista: Ali Abbasi
entrevista: Ali Abbasi
entrevista: Zar Amir Ebrahimi
ficha de la película]. And I think something magical happened at that point. In my mind, I immediately thought: it’s her, it’s her! That’s how Selma looks. That’s how she moves, that’s her physique, that’s what I was looking for. And then I realised there was a language barrier, because she’s Iranian and she speaks Persian. But she learned Arabic because there was no way I was going to work with any other actress. Working together was an extraordinary experience. It’s something that’s really stayed with me. Because, first of all, we have something in common: both of us were forced to leave our country. Zar had an incredibly violent experience in her homeland. She was also forced to leave and she’s a really brave woman. So that had a huge impact on our work. From the outset, we were both agreed on what Selma should be: an inspiring woman, strong yet fragile. And I feel that Zar conveyed the full range of emotions, because it’s a film which covers a lot of emotions.

Are you now thinking about a new film?
I’m in the process of writing my new project, which will form part of a trilogy along with my first film, My Favourite Fabric [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película], and Pieces of a Foreign Life. In this new film, there’s a bit of nostalgia, childhood; it’s about how to dream in a country dominated by a dictatorship, Syria in the Eighties. How can a little girl want to be an actress? Given all the nostalgia I feel for my country, and that I can’t go back in the current context, film is the only way for me to visit my homeland.