Interview with Sofia Alaoui, Director of ‘Animalia’

A few months ago, I began writing about film and the cinema with a feature on Animalia, a sci-fi film set in Morocco and directed by French-Moroccan Sofia Alaoui. I first came across the film on the Sundance website, and I was so enamored with the premise of Alaoui’s feature-length debut (“As she nears the end of her pregnancy, Itto and her in-laws find their lives turned upside down by a supernatural event”), that I had to watch it. 
Ever since, I haven’t stopped thinking about it — Alaoui’s film, seeped in discourse at the Western/MENA boundary, explores so much in its tight 91 minute runtime that to exhaust its thematic implications on faith, feminism, the sci-fi genre, faith, and class demands more words than what we typically allow on FilmSlop. But Alaoui has carved out a new niche for herself and trans-national cinema, and when it gets a wider release this year, I urge you all to watch it. Given how much the film means to me and my journey with writing, when I had the chance to interview Alaoui about her visions of sci-fi, the process of making Animalia and the short film before it, So What If the Goats Die, I was understandably excited.

GEORGE ISKANDER: Thank you so much for doing this with us, Sofia. It's been very exciting watching the debut of your film and watching your journey as a filmmaker and Arab woman. Tell me a little bit about that journey.

SOFIA ALAOUI: Well, it’s not so original, but I started to make some short films when I was a child. I was living in China, so we were traveling quite abroad. I'm half French, half Moroccan, so the question of making a film for me was a way to understand myself and understand the world around me. And I think, regarding So What If the Goats Die and Animalia, it’s an inner quest. There are three languages in the film [ed note: Arabic, Amazigh, French]. It's about dogma. I think it's all about the themes that are explored in the film that I'm questioning in myself.

GI: That's fascinating. Like you mentioned, growing up you spent some time in China and in France. I'm curious how you feel your upbringing influenced your style of filmmaking and journey.

SA: Being worldwide as a child, I was inspired by different filmmakers from all around the world. Well, it’s not about being worldwide as a child, nowadays, everything is so universal, so you can be inspired by different filmmakers. I love the Asian cinema, Russian cinema, Italian cinema and, of course, American films. You were mentioning that I was an Arab filmmaker, but I don’t feel myself as an Arab filmmaker, I just feel myself as a director who is inspired by different stories from around the world. And it was that before all. 

GI: I love that perspective. Definitely — there are so many amazing traditions, especially the Russian and East Asian cinemas. I’m curious about the process of filming Animalia and So What If the Goats Die. You filmed them on location in the Atlas Mountains. What was it like to be there and film those movies?

SA: I love it. I don't know why, but it's something that I'm really connected with. I love empty landscape. I was in Greenland for many months ten years ago, and this idea of working on natural landscape — I felt like I was connected to the universe, to something else. So, I knew that when I wanted to make So What if the Goats Die, I wanted to uncover my story and the Atlas Mountains. But the Atlas Mountains, it’s a different type of landscape, and it’s really huge, so I was scouting for a place where you can feel like you’re on another planet. That’s why the most important thing to me in making So What If the Goats Die was making a film that’s really realistic. There’s this documentary approach, but there’s also this symbolic approach and this idea of filming a place; the science fiction part can also come from the landscape. 

GI: I love how you depicted the landscape. I was stunned by these vistas of the mountains and the landscape. I also enjoyed the aspect of religion in these films. Science fiction has been around for a long time, but it's not so common, at least in the West, that I see religion and science fiction interacting with each other. But in this film, it's part of everyday life for these characters, it’s everyday reality. When you were making these two films, how important for you was it to depict religion, to depict people praying and practicing?

SA: Well, it was pretty simple, because I was — I am — living in Morocco. Religion is something really important in Morocco. So, for me, it was really natural. There is religion, of course, but it's more about dogma. And I think, mainly because I was traveling quite abroad, I was questioning this idea of dogma a lot. It was really natural to make.

GI: Dogma — I see it in the films, in this question of how do people react when there's this possibility of extraterrestrial life, when the world might be changed? Do you just believe blindly in religion and God? Or do you maybe have a more expansive view of God? I’m sure everybody's going to come away with their own ideas of what it means, but I'm curious to hear a little bit more about dogma because you mentioned it before.

SA: Well, there’s this idea of life and there is one way of thinking, you need to respect stuff, there is the woman, the male, behavior… These ideas are completely built by this idea that people have some religion. There’s this notion of dogma, of respect, of respecting things without making any sense, without being connected to your environment. Living in Morocco, religion is really strong, but there is a new religion all around the world: money. Even if people are really religious, they’re really devoted to money and salaries. At the same time, they’re completely disconnected from their environments and questions of what is it to be? What is it to experience life on this earth? What is it to be human on this planet? It was this idea of questioning in Animalia.

GI: In America, people nominally are very religious, but this doesn't always translate into respect for the planet, for the environment, or for other people. There's some sort of large dissonance there. So I think seeing that conveyed in film so beautifully is wonderful. I noticed a lot of inspiration from slow cinema, and there are a couple of scenes where I said, “This reminds me a lot of Stalker and Tarkovsky—”

SA: Exactly, exactly, it was a real inspiration.

GI: Well, that's wonderful. It was really poignant, because it’s a film with some similar themes about faith. I’ve been talking a lot about inspiration, but I’m wondering if you could comment some more on what films or filmmaking styles were big for you in the making of Animalia.

SA: Well, I had these abstract ideas because of the themes of the film, so I was scouting a bit for real inspiration in order to share my vision with the DOP and the VFX supervisor. It was important to have inspiration, but more so to have concrete films you can really talk about. For example, in Stalker, there’s this idea of the clouds and the presence of the invisible. I knew I wanted a big cloud, a lake, etc. But I was looking for something that maybe could help me make my idea precise, and when I saw Stalker, I saw this, and I was like, “Oh my God, this is it.” I assume that when she [ed note: Itto, main character of Animalia enters into this cloud, this presence in the cloud is moving, and the supernatural elements are here. Stalker was important for that, for sharing and making my ideas more understandable to the VFX supervisor and DOP. 

And Under the Skin by Glazer, I love this guy. He’s one of my favorite directors. It was also visually an inspiration.

GI: Hearing how intertextual your film is with those and being from a different cinematic tradition is wonderful. Your film recently premiered in France, I've been seeing your Instagram stories about it. It seems like there's been so much excitement, but I’m not plugged into French media. Tell me how the reception has been, and also how it feels for you as a filmmaker seeing your feature debut being received widely for the first time.

SA: Well, it's funny, because there are two different groups, there’s the profession, and there are the press and audience. I think that the profession was a bit scared about the film, because it was not a typical Arab movie or a movie with a big subject. So they didn’t know how to actually sell it to the audience. They were like, “Oh my God, it’s not a typical science fiction movie, it’s not a typical horror movie.” There’s a high subject, poverty, in an Arab movie. They didn’t know how to sell it. And we had a small while where they didn’t know how to do it.

And the press was like, “Oh my God, the people won’t understand, it will be complicated…” Yada yada yada, but we had a really, really great reception from the audience who understood clearly. Some people will not like the film, I’m not talking about them. But there are a lot of people that are aiming for this type of film, where you can maybe travel and question yourself, because nowadays, all the films, they give you all the answers. It’s television for cinema. I’m a director that loves ancient movies where you need to participate to help you have a reflection. But the French press was really great. 

GI: It is very open ended. I think, with any sort of cinema, people just need an open mind to these sorts of things, even if it's not spelled out for them. There are aspects of it that appeal to people who maybe are not familiar with Arab, Amazigh, or MENA culture, and there are aspects that make even more sense if you’re in tune with these sorts of things. One thing I appreciated was the main character, Itto, wants the driver to help him, and it’s her last resort. Up until this point, she’s only been speaking Arabic and French, and suddenly, she starts speaking Amazigh. There’s a class element to this that’s powerful. Anyways, has the film gotten a wide release in Morocco yet? If so, what are people saying? 

SA: Well, it's going to be released really soon, and I'm excited to show it in Morocco. We have a MENA distributor so it's going to be released in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Qatar,…I'm really excited.

GI: Fingers crossed, and I hope for the best. It almost feels like there's been a renaissance for the cinema recently. Moroccan cinema is making so many strides and is getting so much attention with directors like Nabil Ayouch and Maryam Touzani. They’re making splashes at all these film festivals, and your film, God willing, is going to be up there with them. The industry is tackling a lot of social ills and issues within Morocco and the Middle East. Where do you think this cinema is going to go in the next few years? Or at the very least, what do you hope for Morocco?

SA: I think it’s really great. We have many directors, and I’m optimistic because we have many creators, many filmmakers, and young filmmakers. So, I know that the projects that are going to arrive in the next few years will be amazing.

GI: I can’t wait to see it. One thing I forgot to ask you about your journey to being a filmmaker: did you come into filmmaking from a more traditional or nontraditional background?

SA: Yeah, I was in a film school. In Paris. I was completely obsessed when I was a teenager. I was scouting for a film school at the age of 13. It was really early. I was completely excited to do a film school after my diploma.

But now, I think that sometimes it’s also great to not have this cinema background and study anything else. Now, I’m really passionate about physics, mathematics. But I was really bad in school with that. So, I don’t know. I think everything leads to your goal in the end, because I know many people who have done my film school course, and they’re not in the industry anymore. I don’t think that because you’re in a film school, you’re going to be a director. There’s no one path. 

GI: Even from a young age you were totally obsessed with film. Was there some sort of experience or film that made you think, this is what I have to do?

SA: No, it's not about a film. I was completely set in this idea of making films, on this idea of going to film school. I was making many short films when I was a teenager. So, it was about making, making, making. I grew up in Morocco and in Morocco, there were only blockbusters. I didn't have a tutorial. Everything that I learned after I learned it by myself — now, I’m trying to find some films, trying to watch some directors’ filmographies, but that wasn’t the beginning of the journey.

GI: Thank you. It's always early, but what are you looking for beyond Animalia? What’s on the horizon for you?

SA: Because we're speaking in English and because of the sunlight, I’ll tell you I’m working on a Moroccan-Arabic language movie, but I’m also aiming to do something more universal, and an English language movie is something that I’m really excited about. 

GI: That's exciting! Okay, wonderful. This was very helpful. Is there anything else you want to tell our readers?

SA: I don't know. Watch the film.

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Sofia Alaoui is a French-Moroccan director. She has directed So What If The Goats Die (for which she won the Short Film Grand Jury Prize at Sundance). She recently debuted her feature Animalia, an apocalyptic sci-fi film set in Morocco.