With A.U.D., 24 year old Majid Ammam has given us a powerful and beautiful film about friendship, alcoholism, loss and the possibility of redemption. This is really a heartbreaking film and I’m very glad you can answer some of our questions.
Chris McClure, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): I believe the film was made during COVID-19. Could you tell us how that affected the production?
Majid Ammam (MA): We were very lucky, we finished shooting 2 days before the first covid-19 containment in France.
I had told my team that we would only have 6 days to shoot the film, which was a very big challenge as we were shooting in different locations and in 2 different cities, it was very hard, physically and mentally but my team was able to adapt and show professionalism.
The post-production phase took place during several lockdowns in France, which certainly complicated things, but allowed us to overcome this unpleasant period during the pandemic.
(UM): The name, Kahil Bellami. This doesn’t seem to have been chosen at random since it means something like ‘friend’ in both the first and last names. Was the name chosen intentionally?
(MA): Yes this was intentional, kahil in the beginning of the story, is in full solitude, alone, without support, he does not dare to show his true face, his true pain to his friends, he plays the role of the “sad clown” in front of them. But eventually Kahil finds a friend (Leon) to whom he is not afraid to expose his true face, his true nature and his true pain, and Leon is the friend who offers a shoulder for Kahil to cry on, to breathe on and to confide in.
(UM): The dedication at the end of the film suggests that your own situation is perhaps similar to that of Kahil. Would you want to elaborate?
(MA): Yes the film is semi-fictional, I lost my older sister to cancer in 2019, the day before I turned 23. It was a difficult ordeal, which like kahil I was at the bottom of. One day I decided to go to writing therapy hoping to get better, I started writing a screenplay, and that’s how I wrote A.U.D., a semi-fictional, intimate feature film, I imagined kahil’s story inspired by my personal life. Just like kahil I met a person who was as tortured as I was at that time, to whom I did not feel the need to play the role of the “sad clown” and who knew how to listen to me and advise me, this person is Raphael Convers, the assistant director on the film.
(UM): There were some wonderful original songs in the film Could you tell us about how you put the soundtrack together?
(MA): The music is beautiful, and this is thanks to the talents of the people who composed it on the film. Each piece of music has been composed especially for each scene, so that it can be related to what is happening in the scene. So that we can add emotion at the right moment. I particularly appreciate the 2 musics with lyrics, written and composed by the talented Léana Enjalbert, who knew perfectly how to write the right lyrics and compose the right instrumentalization to add emotion in the 2 scenes, and touch your heartstrings.
(UM): The film raises a number of very difficult questions. For me, I wondered – is it possible to get into such a bad situation in your life that you can never really recover or achieve redemption? What do you think?
(MA): Yes, this is possible for everyone. From my point of view, in life you have to expect everything. Misfortune as well as fortune can suddenly fall on us. Without warning. But we are not always prepared for the dramas we are about to experience. The situation can quickly deteriorate when we hope that things will get better when they don’t. It is human to hope. It is also human to despair, when hope has been dashed and the pain that overwhelms us becomes too great. Each person is different and reacts differently to a given situation, dramatic or not. I wanted to show a genuine suffering and distress, inspired by my own experience. Reality in some cases can exceed fiction, as you know.
(UM): Do you think alcohol was the primary evil in the film? Or, in Léon’s case, was professional ambition the bigger problem?
(MA): Alcohol was not the main evil of the film, it was a solution, for kahil and leon, the main evil of A.U.D, was self-hatred, and the fact that our two protagonists had no more desire to live.
In Leon’s case, his professional ambition combined with his personal egoism was not an evil for him, but an evil for his relatives, and the reason for his own problems.
(UM): There are a number of interesting quotes in the film. Could you tell us a bit about how you selected them?
(MA): For this question, I leave it to assistant director Raphael Convers, Philosopher, who dealt with the philosophical phrases in A.U.D.
“I wanted the film to have a reflective aspect because, as I said before, A.U.D. is a film that concerns everyone, we are all mortal beings and as such we have to think about our own end and that of our loved ones, even if it is unpleasant. With this in mind, I asked the assistant director, who is a philosopher by training, if he could think of some philosophical quotations to accompany this reflection as well as Kahil’s states of mind. In this respect, it is quite conceivable that it is Kahil who copies the quotations as part of his script project, when they appear on the screen. The selection of the quotations came about naturally because the assistant director knew me and the story well, we had about twenty pre-selected and finally we retained ten for the film. The other interest of these quotes is that they allow us to shed light on various elements of the story, such as a personality trait, a budding friendship, or simply an emotional “storm” to come.”
(UM): Could you tell us about any future projects?
(MA): I am working on a new script with the assistant director of A.U.D. for a feature film project that will focus on the art world and depression, but in a different form. I want to co-produce this film with a producer we are currently looking for, so that I can concentrate more on directing and less on producing. We are making good progress and hope to start production on this second film in 2022.
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