Iconoclastic Palestinian filmmaker Rakan Mayasi’s first feature film, “No Eyes Slept Yesterday,” made a splash at this year’s Un Certain Regard in Cannes with its powerful, poetic take on a Bedouin community in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. It’s being screened in competition at the El Gouna Film Festival this week. Diversity He talked to the director.
Inspired by Mayasi’s grandmother, this is the story of two women who become pawns in a feud between tribes; It is performed in a forward-thinking style that owes much to Mayasi’s mentor Abbas Kiarostami, but still has its own rhythm and a sensual, sometimes almost feverish, perspective. The film, which was warmly received at other festivals after its premiere in Cannes, will be screened at CineMed in Montpellier and then in the Best First Feature section of the Rome Film Festival. International sales are handled by Salaud Morisset.
The film has many extraordinary scenes: it opens with a car in flames, there is a surprisingly hallucinatory wedding scene in the middle, and it ends with an evocative long shot that plays with visual space. Were these already in your mind when you and your cinematographer Pôl Seif were designing the film?
Some of them were already established and ready in our minds. Some of them are no. For example, of course the fire was there from the beginning. I’m interested in metaphors and how to translate them visually, so with Pôl came the idea of zooming in so you could feel the car approaching you and the fire spreading. We were trying to translate what the metaphor might look like. However, the ending was rewritten by both of us because it is a very visual scene. So we blocked it again three days before shooting ended and completely rewrote it.
The wedding scene has been highlighted by many critics for its visual beauty and the emotional shift it carries.
In that scene, I allowed myself to step outside of the narrative, so to speak, and change the rhythm and play with a kind of psychedelic approach. It is never stated that this is the real wedding, and the appearance of one of the sisters, Cevahir, as the bride is quite theatrical. This idea was like getting closer to his subconscious, a dream of celebration. It made me play. For example, the entire scene was improvised. I’ve never met any of these dancers before. We called for the largest number of people to attend and we were very lucky because a lot of people showed up and they were very, very energetic. My job was just to grab a microphone and make them more energetic.
The stage also allows the community to be seen in a more three-dimensional light.
The idea was to juxtapose the two emotions and then make the audience feel guilty. I want to enjoy watching this sweet, psychedelic inflected dance scene, but then I’ll ask myself: What did I just watch and why did I enjoy it? That was the idea.
Is this something you enjoyed about the movie overall? Do you like the idea of thinking about what I just watched?
Yes! My next movie will be exactly like this.
Speaking of the unexpected, we are used to a certain Lebanese cinema that deals primarily with the Civil War and its subsequent crises. But you chose something completely different. You went to the Bekaa Valley and focused on a community that has probably never been seen before in a feature film.
I don’t like formulaic movies. I don’t like the way we’re seen out there as every movie has to talk about the Civil War or the post-Civil War period. I want to go to communities that haven’t been in movies before because the plot, the characters, and the life there have so much more depth.
That’s why I wanted to work with non-professional actors. In this context, I could take the actors and put them there, but I choose not to do that because this fragile authenticity needs to be preserved. Also remember that I am Palestinian. I have lived in Lebanon for 20 years, and although I do not have Lebanese citizenship, I feel somewhat Lebanese because I am a filmmaker in Lebanon. But I don’t like the mainstream, so to speak. Basically, I love digging in and seeing more to life.
Is your next project set in Lebanon?
Half of this happens in Gaza. It was supposed to be my first feature film, but it’s a black comedy, so I had to stop it when the Israeli genocide started in Palestine. Now I’m slowly getting back to the topic; An absurd, dull black comedy, very different from “I Didn’t Sleep Yesterday”. In a more controlled environment, it is more gradual. And it’s about life and death. and basically the bureaucracy of life. It’s called “Passport” and I’m in development/pre-production. This movie is produced by May Odeh, the co-producer of the movie “No Sleep Yesterday”.
What will be the sequel to “I Didn’t Sleep Yesterday”?
It’s great that it was selected from 50 festivals after Cannes, and it performs quite well in festivals. I’m doing a tour of eight festivals in October, including Cristian Mungiu’s Cannes Reprise in Rome, Viennale, Valladolid and Bucharest. It will be in Geneva at the beginning of November.