Why did you want to present this story using a first-person testimonial?
All the details mentioned in the film are real facts that I was able to corroborate in several ways: the trial, witness accounts from the victims and the family, police reports, the judicial order… The more I dug around and went deeper, the more I realized I was dealing with the staging of a State crime that involved several of its institutions, including the medical establishment. So I was faced with a challenge: creating a film and a dramatization that were “up to the mark” of the dramatization of the dictator Ben Ali (1987-2011)’s regime. I started by writing a short, very simple script that brought together the different elements of the story, which I then gave to Natacha de Pontcharra, my co-scriptwriter, who had the wonderful idea of having the victim speak in the first person and in the present, thirty years after his death. That initial script, in the first person, was the film’s starting point. That idea was exactly what I was looking for because it was a way of “tele-transporting” us through time to the moment everything happened and of following what the man was subjected to in real time. That’s what I was looking for because the case still hasn’t been solved, thirty years later, and situating it in a story in the present helps to accentuate that aspect, the need for it to be solved, which is one of the film’s messages. Because solving it also means that justice will have been served. Unfortunately however, I think that will never happen.

How did you go about creating the images that accompany the voice-over?
I started from the script and began thinking about it with Lotfi Mahfoudh, a director of animated films whose work I very much like, and Anissa Daoud, the film’s producer, who has always made important artistic contributions during discussions of my films. I wasn’t totally sure where I was headed, but the one “condition” I argued for in our discussions was freedom. I felt this story had to weave between documentary and fiction but also between different types of images, different platforms, different aesthetic choices. I’ve never been afraid of blends or hybrids – on the contrary! I knew we’d be able to achieve a form of coherence if we did things this way. I dove into several types of archives, I filmed hearings attended by both the victim’s family and the Interior Minister at the time, which had only the voice track since images were prohibited. But I felt that that present wasn’t the only thing that interested me, but rather the idea of a visible and invisible trail. So we tried different animation techniques, and black and white quickly became the obvious choice. Then we ended up adopting “photocopy” images initially based on photos, texts, archives: we’d photocopy images then animate them. Then we had one day of shooting with the actors, with the same principle of photocopying, we built big windows and filmed horizontally from below with actors above the glass. Then Lotfi Mahfoudh and I storyboarded everything to complete constructing the film which literally superimposes several layers of images, drawings, graphic images, hand-written text… All our work was carried out going back and forth between the on-set improvisations or the animation attempts and more and more precise splicing. But we kept to the principle of research and freedom all through to the editing phase.

To what degree where you motivated to question the silence of the institutions and their role – whether active or indifferent – in the use of torture?
I think that questioning is actually crucial for Tunisia’s future. For its peace. For its development and to be able to come up with a genuine social pact where thousands of victims and torturers will be able to live together. For a peaceful cohabitation to occur, the State must imperatively recognize its responsibilities among all of its institutions for the atrocious, large-scale crimes carried out since independence exactly sixty-five years ago. Because what has been hidden from Tunisians, beyond the abjection of many crimes, is the extent of those crimes. In the thousands. Which is what I’ve been able to discover by working for three years now on this topic. At the same time, that is not at all the official line. And that’s where there’s an issue. Every regime, without exception, up to the present day, has made use of the police and judiciary institutions for the benefit of the political power of the moment. The compensation the State has offered to the agents of its institutions has been impunity. This has been accompanied by a fallacious, flattering narrative for citizens that has inevitably resulted in representations, a collective image, of what we are. Far from the degree of historical violence that has developed in Tunisian society alongside denial. From my perspective, it’s largely because of these shared lies and denials that we’ve ended up where we are. A society that’s been deeply subjected to violence that could explode at any moment.

Are you interested in the subject of expectation and impediments and do you see yourself making other films about the topic?
The next feature film that I’m making in the spring is actually very strongly imbued with that subject. I hadn’t really thought of it in those terms. And more than that, there’s also a mother waiting for the body of her son, who also died because of terrible violence. But that unfolds differently. I hadn’t really seen the connections between the two stories… We’re not really in control when we make creative acts. But whatever the case, aren’t all dramatic works essentially the story of a frustrated expectation or a thwarted desire?

What’s your definition of a good film?
If I knew… I’d only make good films. At any rate, what I can say and what matters most to me is that the acting be absolutely spot on. Because if there’s one thing that absolutely disqualifies any film in my eyes, even the ones that are magnificently filmed or that have really strong scripts, is when the actors are badly directed.

Angle mort [Blind Spot] is being shown as part of Lab Competition L3.