We spoke to Marta Bergman, whose second feature, The Silent Run [+lire aussi :
interview : Marta Bergman
fiche film], portrays victims of the ongoing migrant crisis on both sides of the fence. The film has just celebrated its world premiere in the International Competition of the Cairo International Film Festival.

Cineuropa: At the beginning of the film, we learn that it’s a fictionalised story based on true events. What on screen is real and what was scripted?
Marta Bergman: Everything was scripted, while my sources were different real-life stories that shocked me deeply. Based on that material, I worked with several collaborators to build a feature-length story with imagined characters, but all anchored in real-world observation.

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What kind of research did you do for the film?
The real stories were everywhere – in the press, on the radio. You often hear about people being shot because they didn’t stop quickly enough when the police chased them. What we wanted to highlight was the political aspect: police chasing migrants.

I come from a documentary background, so I spent time in migrant camps and interviewed many refugees around Brussels – mostly Syrians, since there’s a large community here. Their stories inspired us a lot. We also collaborated with several associations and NGOs, and I observed how doctors and volunteers worked with women and children in these camps.

The gynaecologist in the film, for example, is inspired by this volunteer doctor, detached from her hospital for a year, who offered consultations to women and children in camps in northern France. The camps themselves are illegal, constantly destroyed and rebuilt by migrants who live in tents. NGOs provide some assistance, but most of the time, the migrants themselves rebuild everything.

Did you also speak to policemen?
Yes. We met several police officers – men and women – and joined them on night patrols. The character of Redouane, the policeman in the film, played by Salim Kechiouche, was inspired by one of them. This story of a policeman who kills a child by accident and then faces deep moral turmoil really happened in Belgium. It’s tragic, and similar cases occur in France and elsewhere.

One of the most powerful scenes shows the mother being kept from entering the ambulance with her dying child. Did this also happen in reality?
Reality was even harsher. In the real-life case, the mother wasn’t informed immediately that her child had died. The legal pretext was that everyone in the van was “suspicious” and had to be checked by police first. It’s a cruel form of bureaucracy.

How did you choose your main actors?
The father is performed by Abdal Razak Alsweha, a non-professional actor and a hairdresser in real life, just like in the script. We found him through social networks. He immediately felt right – gentle, not overly masculine, very close to what I had imagined.

The female lead, Zbeida Belhajamor, I had seen in A Tale of Love and Desire [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film], and I was struck by her warmth and energy. She’s from Tunisia; he’s from Syria. Their different backgrounds added something interesting to the film without it needing to be explained. I wanted to show normal life in the camps amid hardship – love, tenderness, care.

The film is quite critical of the official attitude towards migrants in Belgium, but you still managed to get funding from the state. Was it difficult?
It’s not the same “state”. In Belgium, cinema is funded regionally. My film was supported by the Wallonia and Brussels Film Centre, not the federal government. You can easily have a left-leaning cinema centre and a right-wing federal government.

Was it an overall lengthy process?
The script took quite a long time. We wanted to be very precise, especially about the political dimension. One of the hardest parts to write and shoot was the policeman’s decision – what exactly he saw, what he thought. It’s not a direct order; it’s the climate of fear and authority that makes it happen.

What was your core motivation throughout the making of the movie?
I wanted to create a real film, not a manifesto. The story is hard, but it had to have a full-blooded cinematic style and emotion, not to look like an imitation of a documentary. I was surrounded by a very creative team, especially in Canada, where we did post-production and sound.

These stories and characters – the couple, the policeman, the child – came to me suddenly. They haunted me. I wanted to understand how someone could end up committing such an act and what happens to their conscience afterwards. The couple and the child are the true victims, but the policeman is also devastated. They are puppets of a system. I wanted to give them faces, names and emotions – to make them human again.