Born in 1984 in Casablanca, Morocco, Kamal Lazraq left his hometown for the first time at the age of 18 for Paris, where he chose to study law and political science. But now he discovers auteur cinema in France. The young man always wanted to write, without knowing in what form. From now on, he knows it, integrates the Fémis (National higher school of the trades of the image and the sound), where during four years he learns to know the method of work which corresponds to him best. This is nourished by encounters in the streets of Casablanca and is based on a patient observation of reality, the restitution of which involves the search for an aesthetic without artifice and the commitment of non-professional actors.
This approach determines his short films: Drari (awarded by the Cinéfondation of the Cannes Film Festival in 2011) and The Man with the Dog (2014), the story of a night during which a man finds himself in spite of himself confronted with the underworld of clandestine dog fights. A story that Kamal Lazraq has chosen to extend in The Packs, his first feature film, presented this year at Cannes in the Un certain regard selection and awarded the Jury Prize.
When did the writing of the screenplay for your film “Les Meutes” begin? ?
During the shooting of my short film The Man with the Dog. We were filming in areas of Casablanca where I met scarred faces, heard the experiences of men forced by poverty into a form of survival that sometimes pushed them to accept degrading things. I started to write a fairly standard story but I floundered. So I took up the idea of a unit of time (night) and place that I had put in place in my court. The story of the father and his son embarked on a situation that is beyond them then came out very quickly.
What did you want to express through this father-son tandem?
A bit of my personal history and a reality of Moroccan society, where the individual is very often crushed by the community. In this scheme, the authority of the father is very anchored, very sacred. I therefore wanted to show the trajectory of a son who does not dare to challenge paternal authority, even if it means having to accompany him in what will become a nightmare. However, I wanted the son, at some point, to take matters into his own hands, so that he could exist as an individual. The second part of the film aims to tell the emancipation of a young man from his father.
You have 59.82% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.