2023 LaScam Day LaScam Day
Once again, LaScam invites the public on a long journey into the limbo of sketches become films. A journey in time, a journey within the soul or far away to Aleppo or Ahmedabad. Journeys that “open a breach of contradiction” as so aptly put it our friend Jean-Louis Comolli, who left us last year – he who loved the buzzing energy of Lussas.
On the subject of journeys, I would like to pause a moment on The Mother of All Lies which will brilliantly close our “Brouillon d’un rêve” day. Asmae El Moudir, the filmmaker, is from Casablanca. She remembers from her earliest age an “inner need to tell stories”. No doubt this film vibrated within her without her even knowing it. “We grew up together”, she says. It took ten years for her project to ripen, to “learn to recount with images”. The path of her dream was ridden with obstacles, witches and good fairies were on the watch. Asmae carried the dream to Morocco, Senegal, Scotland, the Netherlands, through pitch sessions and workshops. There were writings and rewritings, the hazards of production, financial support promised but never delivered, others too slim “for such a big dream” even if every little bit helped. So-called experts put everything into question. There were moments of despair, swarms of doubts and an inner strength to avoid them: Asmae never ever lost sight of a tiny star shining at the end of the tunnel, the film on the screen. The Cannes Festival selected The Mother of All Lies for Un Certain Regard. Asmae won the prize for direction and in its wake the Golden Eye, the documentary prize created by LaScam with the complicity of Thierry Frémaux. The journey continued from festival to festival. The Czech Republic, South Africa and then Lussas. The horizon keeps expanding, nothing seems too big for Asmae’s dream: winner of the Golden Eye, The Mother of All Lies has been preselected for the 2024 Oscars. Did Asmae dare imagine such success when, so young, she felt this need to tell stories. I would say yes. In ten years, she never gave up on anything. Asmae speaks of “patience”. One could say “faith”. It’s above all what we can call being a filmmaker.
Rémi Lainé, filmmaker, president of LaScam
Debates in the presence of the directors.