We met with French filmmaker Hanaël El Yousfi, whose debut feature The Daughters of Abraham was screened in the Discovery section of the 51st Toronto International Film Festival, after winning an Audience Award, as well as a Special Mention for its actresses, at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival.

Cineuropa: What inspired you to tackle a subject as sensitive as relations between Arab and Jewish communities in France?
Hanaël El Yousfi: It was already a complicated project, but 7 October made the context explosive. At one point, I thought the film wouldn’t happen because the actors no longer wanted to work together. We had to wait for things to calm down a little and for emotions to subside. This film is close to my heart because I’ve felt connected to both communities all my life. I wanted to bring them into the same frame because, I’ve often been with one or the other throughout my life, but never with both at the same time. And on both sides, there was this culture of seeing the other as the enemy and of contempt for the other. Hence the idea of showing their similarities by moving from one family to the other, following and focusing on the young women, because I identify with them.

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Over and above your own personal experience, did you do any research to inform the screenplay?
There is, unfortunately, an autobiographical side to the film, but I met many other girls whose stories I could compare with my own. It was almost therapeutic for me. I also wanted to talk to men because I didn’t want to turn them into monsters; I wanted to understand their motivations. My feeling was that we were all victims of patriarchy, not of religion. In my film, it’s not belief that’s harmful, it’s tradition disguised as belief. It’s important to shatter conflations and to shine a light on a common thread between the two communities: namely, families give out love as well as poison. And that’s what the girls are up against.

The film is careful to keep politics off-screen and focuses on the confinement of young women within family strictures of honour and reputation.
You can’t be indifferent to politics, but the debate is currently so polarised and, sadly, so lacking in nuance that I felt it was too heavy to be dispatched in a few lines. I wanted to focus on similarities - a sense of celebration, family values, a certain life force, food, etc. - and things which lead to women being oppressed in the name of tradition.

What about the film’s tone: a drama that sometimes verges on "comedy"?
The light-hearted register, the frank talking and the irony used by my actresses are synonymous with youth. They’re also used as weapons by the girls in the film. It’s likewise tied to Mediterranean culture, which isn’t about restraint, it’s about passion, excess and humour. I also wanted the characters to evolve: at first, they’re unaware of certain forms of violence, so there’s a lightness, but they gradually become maturer and more responsible for their own futures, and things shift into a more dramatic register. My aim was to be as truthful as possible, so it was essential for me to show the characters in all their complexity, because I couldn’t denounce what I wanted to denounce in an upfront way.

What were your main intentions in terms of film direction?
My references are Abdellatif Kechiche, John Cassavetes, Maïwenn and Hafsia Herzi, filmmakers who take their time and film life unvarnished in a quest for truth and authenticity. But since I didn’t go to film school, my approach is fairly hybrid. For example, for the procession sequence, I drew inspiration from music videos such as Territory by The Blaze or Leïla by Acid Arab. As for the opening scene, that was inspired by Eugène Delacroix’s painting, Women of Algiers in their Apartment, but I revisited that Orientalism because my characters are women who decide, who are in motion, and who are sensual but also dignified.