For film director and producer Rachid Bouchareb, the word ‘no’ is a means of encouragement rather than a negative response, and after hearing the word so many times throughout his career, it lost all meaning to him.
“The nos I faced were positives for me. At one point, the ‘no’ loses its force and you overcome it,” he said during a discussion on Friday at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival (ADFF).
His resilience is not surprising for a man who literally changed France’s history and politics merely through making films. His 2006 film, Days of Glory, helped shape France’s laws by shedding light on North African men who fought in the French army to liberate the country from Nazi oppression, and fight French discrimination.
The film highlights the fact that the North African men were receiving very little pension compared to French veterans.
“We invited [then-] President [Jacques] Chirac to attend the film [screening], and we pressured him gently to say yes [about improving the men’s pensions] and he did. We told him that this isn’t a political yes.
A couple of weeks later, we got a call from the minister and we went to meet him...[The issue] was partly solved,” Bouchareb said.
Deciding on the cast
He added that the film, for which he won an Oscar, took several years to make, and that he waited for a certain calibre of actors to agree to work on it.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime project. This injustice was so great [and] so immense that you can’t ignore it. It was huge that this film changed the law and affected the president’s decision. I always told myself that if it wasn’t us working on it, it would have been someone else,” the Frenchman said.
His most recent film, Two Men in Town, starring Forest Whitaker, is set for screening at ADFF. Filmed at the Mexican border, the film follows a Muslim convert and ex-convict who befriends his parole officer.
“Forest is an actor I met two to three years prior to making the film. I approached him [about being in a film] but I didn’t have a topic, so I was thinking. There was a film I saw as a child called Two Men in Town and I thought maybe I should adopt that,” Bouchareb said.
As for his next project, the director, who is of Algerian descent, said he is currently working on a documentary about war in Algeria. He also has plans to make a film with French film director Karim Dridi about turmoil in the French city of Marseille.
Memories of home
Bouchareb, may also very well be on his way to start working on a film set in the Middle East — provided he receives enough funding. He welcomed the idea of setting a film in this part of the world, saying that he does not feel estranged in the UAE as the country reminds him of Algeria.
Famous for his films that tackle issues of immigration and the relationship between the Arab world and the West, Bouchareb has three Oscar nominations under his belt for his films, Dust of Life, Days of Glory, and Outside the Law.
He attributed his interest in the topic of immigration to the fact that his parents are immigrants who moved from Algeria to France in the 1940s.
Commenting on the Black Pearl career achievement award he received on the opening night of ADFF, Bouchareb said: “I’m still at the middle of my career, not the end. [The award] is an encouragement to continue but it doesn’t mean that I’m at the end of my career.”
