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Hani Tamba - Scriptwriter / Director
I started to create the characters before finding the original idea. I had characters, I had situations, but I did not have a clear story yet. All I knew is that I wanted to narrate a deep matter in a light way. And somehow, I started to find the connecting thread that links those characters together. I thought about the story of a French singer arriving to Lebanon, and all the anecdotes that take place between him and the local inhabitants. The aim of such absurd situations during which a French guy finds himself in a different environment than the one he's used to in France, was to make the foreigner come to the post-war Lebanon, while keeping the Lebanese civil war in the backseat. We do not have to show it or talk about it. It's there, incrusted in the memory of the Lebanese.
I always tell myself that I want to try to write something serious, but it is never serious. There are always jokes or funny situations that come out of my scripts. Though I think that with comedy, we can always tell profound and sad things, just like a clown would do. For me, a clown is a lot sadder than someone who is actually crying. All the characters in the film, in a way or another, have been inspired by real people, and I have remodeled them in order to form a story. I feel I am surrounded by a wonderful French crew and an equally wonderful Lebanese one. It's a family with whom I have lived for the past three weeks. I do the readings with them, discuss the dialogues, I take their opinion. I think it's important to work with comedians, to allow them to take part in the process; they have to feel at ease with the dialogues and the characters that they would be reincarnating.
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