THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
In the surge of films evoking the various sources of the current great malaise in educational establishments, Amal, coming from our Belgian neighbors, is not the least frightening. Taking over from No waves, by Teddy Lussi-Modeste – released on March 27, the film discusses a case of false accusation of harassment made by a student against her teacher –, Amal analyzes the entry exercised in educational establishments by the Salafist movement. Jawad Rhalib, its author, is not his first attempt. This 58-year-old Belgian-Moroccan director, who began as a journalist and unfailing defender of freedom of thought, has been producing politically and socially engaged films, both in documentaries and fiction, since 1997.
Here, in the center of the frame, Amal, a Brussels literature teacher and secularist activist, herself from a Muslim immigrant family. Played with passion by Lubna Azabal, a Belgian actress familiar with French auteur cinema, this character will quickly become the prey of an action of destabilization and intimidation where malevolence competes with cowardice and indifference. It all begins in class where the violent persecution of a homosexual student by a small group of fellow students defending a rigorous vision of Islam encourages the teacher to emphasize tolerance and respect for others in her class. .
To do this, and to show that the culture in the land of Islam was itself more diverse than what some are willing to recognize, she chose to introduce her class to the poetry of Abu Nuwas, an Arab-Muslim poet. bisexual of VIIIe century, both innovative and libertine. This “audacity » is the starting point of an insidious war which will target her in the name of respect for the morals and beliefs of a certain number of students.
Irreconcilable Opposition
The intervention of one of his colleagues, a religion professor in the same college, who denounces this initiative, the openly threatening pressure from certain parents of students, the unleashing of social networks waving death threats will soon undermine his confidence, even to the extent that his colleagues and the director of the establishment, frightened by the dimension that the conflict is taking, mark a distance towards him which leads to his loneliness.
We therefore find in Amal this process, both diffuse and ultraviolent, which results in the marginalization and bitterness of the young teacher of No waves. Unlike this last film, however, careful to spare the reasons of all the protagonists, Amal, which certainly describes through Salafism a completely different type of antagonism, straightforwardly plays the card of irreconcilable opposition. In this regard, he works on the character of the religion professor, played by the Dardennian Fabrizio Rongione, in the same way that a certain Hollywood cinema overloads its legendary traitors: deceitful, dangerous, unscrupulous. Or a character with two faces, distilling in homeopathic doses and in a suitable tone the poison of democratic relativism within the framework of the school, cultivating clearly more bellicose passions within that of his religious association.
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