play_arrow

keyboard_arrow_right

Listeners:

Top listeners:

skip_previous skip_next
00:00 00:00
playlist_play chevron_left
volume_up
Go to album
  • cover play_arrow

    ENGLISH Channel 01 If English is your language, or a language you understand, THIS IS YOUR CHANNEL !

  • cover play_arrow

    ITALIAN Channel 02 Se l’italiano è la tua lingua, o una lingua che conosci, QUESTO È IL TUO CANALE!

  • cover play_arrow

    EXTRA Channel 03 FRED Film Radio channel used to broadcast press conferences, seminars, workshops, master classes, etc.

  • cover play_arrow

    GERMAN Channel 04 Wenn Ihre Sprache Deutsch ist, oder Sie diese Sprache verstehen, dann ist das IHR KANAL !

  • cover play_arrow

    POLISH Channel 05

  • cover play_arrow

    SPANISH Channel 06 Si tu idioma es el español, o es un idioma que conoces, ¡ESTE ES TU CANAL!

  • cover play_arrow

    FRENCH Channel 07 Si votre langue maternelle est le français, ou si vous le comprenez, VOICI VOTRE CHAINE !

  • cover play_arrow

    PORTUGUESE Channel 08

  • cover play_arrow

    ROMANIAN Channel 09 Dacă vorbiţi sau înţelegeţi limba română, ACESTA ESTE CANALUL DUMNEAVOASTRĂ!

  • cover play_arrow

    SLOVENIAN Channel 10

  • cover play_arrow

    ENTERTAINMENT Channel 11 FRED Film Radio Channel used to broadcast music and live shows from Film Festivals.

  • cover play_arrow

    BULGARIAN Channel 16 Ако българският е вашият роден език, или го разбирате, ТОВА Е ВАШИЯТ КАНАЛ !

  • cover play_arrow

    CROATIAN Channel 17 Ako je hrvatski tvoj jezik, ili ga jednostavno razumiješ, OVO JE TVOJ KANAL!

  • cover play_arrow

    LATVIAN Channel 18

  • cover play_arrow

    DANISH Channel 19

  • cover play_arrow

    HUNGARIAN Channel 20

  • cover play_arrow

    DUTCH Channel 21

  • cover play_arrow

    GREEK Channel 22

  • cover play_arrow

    CZECH Channel 23

  • cover play_arrow

    LITHUANIAN Channel 24

  • cover play_arrow

    SLOVAK Channel 25

  • cover play_arrow

    ICELANDIC Channel 26 Ef þú talar, eða skilur íslensku, er ÞETTA RÁSIN ÞÍN !

  • cover play_arrow

    INDUSTRY Channel 27 FRED Film Radio channel completely dedicated to industry professionals.

  • cover play_arrow

    EDUCATION Channel 28 FRED Film Radio channel completely dedicated to film literacy.

  • cover play_arrow

    SARDU Channel 29 Si su sardu est sa limba tua, custu est su canale chi ti deghet!

  • cover play_arrow

    “Conversation with” at the 20th Marrakech IFF, interview with actor Willem Dafoe Bénédicte Prot


Marrakech International Film Festival

Ali Abbasi, interview with the director and screenwriter in Marrakech

todayDecember 8, 2024

Background
share close

Ali Abbasi, member of the jury at the 21st Marrakech IFF, talks at length about censorship and perception

  • cover play_arrow

    Ali Abbasi, interview with the director and screenwriter in Marrakech Bénédicte Prot

Podcast | Download

A very interesting conversation with Danish-Iranian director and scriptwriter Ali Abbasi, who is a member of the international jury who will bestow the Golden Star of the 21st Marrakech International Film Festival.

The author of “Shelley” (2016), “Border” (2018, Un Certain Regard Award for Best Film), “Holy Spider” (2022, Best Actress in Cannes for Zar Amir Ebrahimi) and more recently the Cannes-premiered “The Apprentice” (2024), a keen analyst of the concept of monstruosity who has faced bans left and right with his latest films, regrets that debate about his work as a filmmaker is always brought to a political territory, and its interpretation limited by limited perceptions. 
Abbasi evokes his experience with “Holy Spider” (on an ordinary Iranian citizen turned serial killer attacking  prostitutes) and “The Apprentice” (on the ascent of a young Donald Trump), talks at length about censorship and perception, mentions the role of streamers in recent evolutions in that respect, as well as the necessity for a filmmaker to be impolite.   
On the reception of “The Apprentice” in the United States: “I am disappointed and shocked, and I have been since we came out in Cannes, by the reception in the US – that the film is being considered controversial. I mean, Donald Trump is the encyclopedia entry of ‘controversial’ – I don’t know what’s controversial about the movie. But in a way, it also shows you the limits of a certain kind of market economy, a capitalist market… The market actually is a very efficient way of censoring itself.“
On “strong men” and their rule: “The one good thing about growing up in Iran is that you get a very good bullshit detector, and I can smell a ‘strong man’ from miles away, and Donald Trump is a ‘strong man’. And the tactics of a strong man is always the same: it’s always manipulating the media, trying to model the reality and truth to the point where you don’t know what’s true and what’s not, having henchmen, psychics or whatever… As dramatic and simple as it is in ‘The Apprentice’, I think whatever Roy is teaching Donald is pretty effective in reality. It might not sound like it, but if you follow Khomeini’s rule in Iran, it’s not very different… I don’t want to make everything relative, because yes, there is a difference between the United States and Iran, absolutely […], but I definitely feel they [people in the US] should be worried.”
On streamers and being non-controversial sadly becoming a virtue: “Now, at the age of streaming, there is an added layer of censorship, I think, in the way they do the first filtering of all that. […] Now the virtue of not censoring is not a virtue anymore, it’s almost seen as an elitist thing – you get told ‘Why do you insist on showing some things that bother people?!’ –, and I think that we have gone from being the counterculture to being asshole elitists who don’t want people to have fun.”
On perception: “When we premiered ‘Holy Spider’ in Cannes, the first week, we were misogynists who loved to see women suffer and being tortured, and then incidentally, the Women, Life, Freedom movement started and suddenly, people were talking to me about the movement as if I was representing the movement. The movie was the same!”
About meeting fellow-exiled Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof in Marrakech and his latest film, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”: “It’s funny because in the festival, we’ve had so many movies that play on the same theme, which I don’t think is a coincidence, the theme being suppression of oppression… It’s very interesting: we’ve seen the Argentinian version of it, the Moroccan version of it  […], and I think Mohammad masterfully did that! It is also very interesting that he can have empathy for the people who put him in jail and have been making his life very, very difficult. I think that’s a very courageous thing to do.“

Written by: Bénédicte Prot

Guest

Film

Festival

Rate it

Related Posts

Channel posts

0%
Skip to content