meeting with Hafsia Herzi and Nadia Melliti

(Interview to be found in the autumn magazine of Têtu·, or by subscription.) Hafsia Herzi, director of The Little Lastand its Cannes-winning lead actress, Nadia Melliti, return together to the adventure of this film in their image: modest and powerful.

In 2020, Fatima Daas publishes The Little Lastan autobiographical debut novel which recounts his difficulties in reconciling his faith and his budding desire for women. Five years later, Hafsia Herzi, a César-winning actress and established filmmaker, produced an adaptation for the cinema which moved the entire Croisette in May during the last Cannes Film Festival. The film left with the Queer Palmpresented by Christophe Honoré on the sidelines of the festival, and the prize for female interpretation awarded to Nadia Melliti, its main actress, for whom this is her very first role! It hits theaters this Wednesday, October 22.

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• Hafsia, how did you come up with the idea of ​​adapting this novel by Fatima Daas, and how did you work on the screenplay?

Hafsia Herzi : In 2021, after the release of my first film, You deserve a love, producer Julie Billy contacted me to offer me the adaptation of the book. I hadn’t heard of it yet. I read it, and I immediately liked it. For its adaptation, I worked alone. I was a little scared at first, because I had heard a lot of stories of conflicts between authors and the filmmakers who adapt their books. I therefore made it a condition of having my freedom, that people trust me; It went very well, and Fatima validated me. It was I who insisted on having him read the versions of the script to get his opinion.

• The heartache, which is the driving force of your first film, is also very present in The Little Last : Was it important to you that this subject was more in the foreground than in the book?

Hafsia : The book is quite modest; so you had to read between the lines a little. Fatima is not someone who talks a lot. But the love story is still present, and I really wanted to tell both the difficulty of relationships and desire. When Fatima read the script, she thanked me, because the press had approached her book only from the angle of religion and homosexuality, never from that of desire. I imagined a fairly carnal film because it is above all a story of emancipation and discovery, that of a sensual and free heroine who gradually frees herself from her shackles.

• This emancipation which is at the heart of the film, Nadia, did you feel it while playing the role of Fatima?

Nadia Melliti : Emancipation means leaving a box in which you do not want to stay. It’s a battle to wage, and I also experienced it in my personal life when, when I was younger, I wanted to play football, a supposedly masculine sport. This helped me interpret this character, without having ever had any acting experience before.

• It’s your first role, and it won you the acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival! How did you approach it?

Nadia : The book was very important since it was the main guideline that allowed me to have a first vision, a first contact with the character. And Hafsia was very present. On the set, she told me that it had to come from the gut, she completely assumed the role of coach. Gradually, with this idea that it must come from the stomach, I did a little mental imagery and tried to feel things. And really, it worked.
Hafsia : We took the time to create a relationship of trust and transparency. It was very simple with Nadia. For example, she has not once made a look at the camera. And that is very rare! We understood each other, and I didn’t have the impression of working with someone who had never played.

And you, Hafsia, by becoming a filmmaker after starting as an actress, did you feel like you were emancipating yourself?

Hafsia : Completely, that’s why I wanted to make it very quickly. It came at the same time as my desire to play. Very quickly, I told myself that I did not want to wait and depend on the desires of others. I wanted to take matters into my own hands, to evolve artistically, to create freely. It brought me a lot of things from a personal point of view. I feel like it helps me realize myself as a woman, even if it’s a big project! We must confront misogyny, in particular.

• After directing three films, do you feel like you’re establishing a style?

Hafsia : Yes, and what I like is realistic cinema. I like that it feels like real life. Filmmakers like Maurice Pialat inspire me a lot. When it’s too classic, it affects me less. And when it’s too clean, I don’t like it.

• We also inevitably think of Abdellatif Kechiche, both because he launched your acting career and because he directed one of the best-known French films about a lesbian love story… Did you The Life of Adèle in mind while working on The Little Last ?

Hafsia : With Abdellatif, we have a very strong relationship. It was with him that I started and, very quickly, I told him of my desires to direct. I had him read my scripts, which were unlike anything at the time. He always encouraged me to write and to produce. I remember him telling me to go for it because he waited until he was 40 to make his first film. But I didn’t think about The Life of Adèlewhich I know was widely criticized by lesbians. Moreover, when I went into the field, many of them told me: please, don’t act like The Life of Adèlewe hated this film, it’s not reality.

• Have you sought documentation to best stick to reality?

Hafsia : Yes, although I have many gay and lesbian people around me, I realized, after agreeing to adapt the book, that there were many questions that I had never asked them. So I interacted with many people in the community, it was important for me not to betray it. And, I investigated as if I were going to interpret the character myself, to try to understand his emotions. It was all the more important since it’s a character that I had never seen in the cinema.

• It’s true that we have rarely seen lesbian Muslim women in the cinema…

Hafsia : Exactly. However, I find that it is important that they are represented and that people can identify with them. Moreover, Fatima says that she wrote this book precisely because when she discovered her homosexuality, there were no characters to identify with. In the same way that it had been a duty for her to write this book, I said to myself that it was a duty to highlight this character in the cinema. I like making films to reconcile, to open dialogue. However, most religions reject homosexuality. It’s terrible, even today, in certain countries, people are killed in the name of religion because of their sexual identity.

• Is tackling lesbianism and Islam in the same film a barrier to finding financing?

Hafsia : It’s true that we met people who didn’t want to understand the character. There is still a lot of homophobia… And with religion on top of that… By accepting the adaptation, I knew it was going to be complicated, so I said to myself: it’s make or break, but we’re going to do everything to make it happen! Today we are receiving wonderful reactions, and I feel real support from people against homophobia.

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photo credit: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images via AFP