Because, first of all for me, it wasn’t respectful of the memory of this little girl to do the mise-en-scène. We are in a very touchy place, and this question of filming the death of a child and doing the mise-en-scène of the death of a child is something so ethically questionable. There’s no need. Why? It would make my movie worse.
What I love in cinema is radical choices. When you stick with one place, when you stick with one point of view, and you manage to tell the story through this point of view, why do I need to skip to every point of view? I don’t know what happened in the tank. I don’t have any firsthand source telling me who was in the tank, what they said; it’s not like the Red Crescent employees. They wanted to tell me their testimony. They shared with me, everything, all the archive of that day.
The Israelis said, “We weren’t there.” Then they said, “We are investigating.” Till now, till today, they are investigating themselves. So, I don’t know what happened. And I don’t know what happened in the car with Hind. All I know about what happened in the car, I heard it in the recording. So, doing the mise-en-scène of all this, why? It will make my film . . . it’s not a very clever choice. I found that the fact we stay with Hind, we understand everything with this document, which is the sound, [is] way too powerful. Because her voice is powerful, because what she said is powerful. Not showing but hearing, imagining, it’s way better.
Auteur: Kaouther Ben Hania
