RED PATH screening at Red Sea International Film Festival

Interview with: Director Lofti Achour and Producers Anissa Daoud and Sébastien Hussenot by Emmanuel Itier

RED PATH is without question one of the most moving film from the Festival. Director Lofti Achour and his team of brilliant creative producers and amazing maverick young actors will slap you in your soul with this “tour de force” picture exposing the harsh horrible reality faced by young children. And the movie travels beyond borders as we know children are enslaved and manipulated by extremists’ group all around the Globe. Be prepared to be moved in your stomach and to want to be part of the change we need, urgently, for this World. Amen.

Q: What is your expectation with this film which is quite moving and sensitive?

Lofti: The movie concerns children and we have decided to do this movie the situation in Gaza was different from the one it is today. To me there is a direct connection between this movie and the events that unfolded in Gaza. We are witnessing violence against children. This is why we focused on children and not on extremists and Jihadists. The focus was violence against young kids. People have to establish this direct connection of violence against thousands of children who have been killed, displaced or amputated. These children are now affected for generations.

Anissa: We talked a long time about the question of showing the cut head or not. But with what we are seeing now in the news, and the horror perpetrated, our film is nothing compared to this. We are used, and it’s awful, to see these horrible images. We did it, we showed the head because it was important for us to show our country, Tunisia, the horror inflicted on children. It’s an history that our government is trying to erase so it’s important to “document” what was done. And the horror children are facing is all over the world. We met this producer from Tijuana yesterday who told us about the trauma of young kids in Mexico facing similar visual horrors and abuses.

Q: How difficult was it to direct children in this film?

Lofti: To my surprise it was not so difficult. The challenge was more about getting the time, and therefore the funding, to properly work with them. It was difficult to rehearse in 12 days most of the scene with the children on location. It was a necessary luxury to be able to be fully ready when came the time to film everything. This was even more difficult for the children to play such scene full of violence and emotions. We need to give time to the children to be able to “digest” the depth of their characters and be able to portray who they were playing.

Sébastien: It also was difficult to find the right location because the region where these events truly took place was dangerous at the time, but not as much today. So, we find another location that looked like the original one. The real locations are very poor areas not made for tourism with no real hotel or proper accommodations. This was quite challenging. And therefore, we went to film this picture 100 km in the North of the real place where you have hotels and proper settings to make the shooting viable. We shot in the Kef area with a very rich soil.

Q: Were the children affected by such a sensitive movie and did they understand the legacy of what you were trying to achieve here?

Lofti: In fact, the 3 young lead actors from the movie comes from an area that suffered greatly from terrorism and Jihadists. It’s an extreme poor area.

Anissa: They were aware of the legacy of this story. And they were proud that their region, their language and their culture were represented with accuracy. They felt respected and in a position of power. The other notion of violence we talk about in this film is “abandonment”. They feel abandoned economically by the government and they have very little resources to survive. These conditions are also a factor to create terrorists.