by Helen Barlow at The Cairo International Film Festival
Marta Bergman’s Belgian film, The Silent Run, has just world premiered in competition* at The Cairo International Film Festival and the engrossing humanistic immigrant story will surely be a contender in the festival’s awards.
It follows a young Syrian couple, Sara and Adam, who with their two-year-old daughter Klara are trying to reach England with the help of traffickers. But the Belgian police are onto them. The film evolves into a chase where the van in which they are crammed with other migrants is hotly pursued and it ends up in tragedy with the death of Klara.
Bergman, 63, an accomplished documentary filmmaker, was intent on adopting a documentary-style realism in creating the film, which draws strong comparisons with Boris Lojkine’s highly lauded The Story of Souleymane. (Bergman is friends with Lojkine.) Her casting of the two young leads, Zbeida Belhajamor and Abdal Razak Alsweha as well as Clara Toros as their daughter is impeccable.
Why did you want to make The Silent Run?
“I am very interested in migration. I was shocked to hear that many children disappear, either as victims of trafficking, or in accidents caused by the police. We wanted to write a feature film inspired by true stories that we hear about, not every day, fortunately, but quite often. I also wanted to give life to all these people we always generically name as migrants. I’m interested in them as individuals, in their day-to-day life, even in the camps. We hear about these terrible stories, but we seldom talk about the victims, who they were, what was their life, and I think it’s important to portray that.”
The police also are in a tough situation. They’re like cowboys, told to wrangle all these people and they’re tired, it’s in the middle of the night…
“Of course. But I don’t want to make them equal victims, because the real victims are the couple and the child. The police force is also the executive force of a political policy. Our main aim in making this film is to show a policy which allows this kind of thing to happen. Still, I really wanted to have the two points of view, so it was complicated to write and to find the right tone.”
The two actors who play the couple have great chemistry. We’d spoken to Zbeida before for A Tale of Love and Desire, another fabulous film where she co-starred with Sami Outalbali (Sex Education). The camera loves her, as it does newcomer Abdal who still works as a hairdresser in the south of France.
“I wanted natural actors. Someone from the Syrian community told Abdal about the casting and we met in Brussels. I’d seen many young people for the part, but he imposed himself because in the script it was written exactly the way he is. I didn’t want a masculine type of man; I wanted someone who was sensitive. In the backstory, it tells why he left his family, also because of the Civil War and the political situation in Syria, which was very strong when we wrote the script. It was towards the end of the war, but the situation was still very difficult. Abdal came to France with his family during the war and they were refugees in France.”
So he really knows the situation?
“Yes, it’s nearly his story. I’d seen Zbeida in A Tale of Love and Desire and I liked her energy, her very open face. We did some tests of them together and it was just right. Zbeida was born in Tunisia and came to France a few years ago. But that was another kind of migration; she came for personal reasons.”
The little girl is fantastic too. Where did you find her?
“We found her through the Syrian community in Brussels, through our translator, who knows her parents. Her parents helped us a lot.”
How did you achieve the chemistry between them?
“It was natural. It sometimes happens that people get along well. We worked together on how to make the couple exist with body language, with gestures, the way they look at each other, the way they touch each other, to create a familiarity, and of course, with the child too.”
Sara and Adam seem like everyday people.
“I didn’t want to show them as miserable. I wanted to have a couple familiar to us, people we could meet and have a drink with, who are not sleeping in the streets, but who have similar tastes to us, similar dreams, similar goals in life, modern people who aren’t too traditional. They are looking to the future, not living in the past. They are not nostalgic people.”
You shot a lot at night. That must have been difficult.
“Yes, it was difficult, especially the chase.”
The chase is gripping.
“I was not on my own. It was a whole team. We thought about it a lot before the shooting. Of course, we worked with stunt people. It was dangerous. The main point, except the technical challenge, which of course was very hard, was to think about what happened. What does the policeman see?”
He was overwhelmed.
“Yes, we wanted to show his confusion, because he doesn’t know what he saw anymore. This was very complicated to write and to show. We didn’t want to show him as a brutal policeman. He’s just a policeman trying to do his job, but he’s overwhelmed by the chase and the politics and the adrenaline.”
French-Algerian actor Salim Kechiouche deftly portrays this conflict.
“Salim lives in Paris and is an experienced actor. He works all the time and here probably has the hardest role. [Kechiouche is a regular in the films of Tunisia-born Abdel Kechiche, including Palme d’Or winner Blue is the Warmest Colour.]
When you spoke to real policemen, what did you learn from them?
“I went with my writers during night shifts with the police. We wrote the script afterwards and we had a police instructor for the shooting to help with the gestures and how things happen. I went to migration camps and met the gynaecologist, and the patients like in the film. We met many Syrian migrants who told us their stories.”
The small details are interesting, like what Sara and Adam took in their bags and how they live inside their camp tents.
“This comes from observation.”
You are a migrant yourself. You came to Belgium from Romania at the age of 10.
“That maybe is the reason why I’m so emotionally involved in migration stories. Also, I think migration is part of our lives. We cannot hide from this.”
Why did your family leave Romania?
“My father left first, because of the Communist regime. Many people wanted to leave.”
And your mother came to Belgium later. It’s a migration story that’s very different to the Syrians. Was it dangerous?
“Yes. It was dangerous in a different way. Every story is quite different.”
The Cairo International Film Festival continues until 21 November.
*The other films in competition are:
Exile | Mehdi Hmili | Tunisia, Luxembourg, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia
The Things You Kill | Alireza Khatami | Turkey, Canada, France, Poland
Renovation | Gabriele Urbonaitė | Lithuania, Latvia, Belgium
Souraya, Mon Amour | Nicolas Khoury | Lebanon, Qatar
Calle Málaga | Maryam Touzani | Morocco, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium
Zafzifa | Peter Sant | Malta
Once Upon a Time in Gaza | Tarzan & Arab Nasser | France, Palestine, Germany, Portugal, Qatar, Jordan
Death Does Not Exist | Félix Dufour-Laperrière | Canada
Sand City | Mahdee Hasan | Bangladesh
One More Show | Mai Saad & Ahmed Eldanf | Egypt, Palestine
Dragonfly | Paul Andrew Williams | United Kingdom
A Son | Nacho La Casa | Spain
As We Breathe | Şeyhmus Altun | Turkey
