Bird's Eye View

BEV Chats To My Brother The Devil writer-director Sally El Hosaini

It may only be February but it is safe to say that Sally El Hosaini is already the woman to watch out for in 2012. Her feature length debut My Brother the Devil – a beautiful and subtle study of what it means to be a young Arab man today in the East London borough of Hackney – has been wowing the judges at the winter film festivals.

Fresh from her successes at Sundance Festival and Berlinale 2012 – where My Brother The Devil won Europa Cinema’s award for “Best European Film” – BEVer Emily Vermont caught up with El Hosaini to talk about the freedom of fiction and those damn statistics.

BEV: Can you remember the first time you decided you’d make a film? Was it something you’d always dreamed of or did you suddenly ‘catch the bug’?

SALLY EL HOSAINI: As a kid I used to write a lot, mainly poetry and short stories.  I was also really into taking black and white photographs, but I hadn’t connected the two activities in my head.  The actual decision to make a film came when I was at university studying something entirely different.  I thought I’d messed up my life by not studying film.  In hindsight not going to film school was the best move I made!  It made me more determined to pursue filmmaking as a career.

BEV: You told the Guardian newspaper that you turned away from documentary film making because “you can be much more truthful in fiction.” Could you elaborate on this?

SEH: I wasn’t making docs on my own terms, but instead for companies who were in turn selling them to TV channels.  The docs were formulaic and no matter how much I tried to avoid it, often sensationalist.  I also had some ethical dilemmas about the way they were being made and about “investigative journalism” in general.  I think the bottom line is that I’m not a journalist. I found that in fiction you can explore questions in a way that you can’t when you are limited by so called “facts”.  You can go deeper.  You can explore the emotional and the psychological dimensions of a story.  I’m suspicious of certainty anyway.  If you look at history, facts seem to change over time and reflect only the present consensus (if that).

BEV: How different were your research methods for My Brother… than those you would use for a documentary film?

SEH: The research methods were similar.  Making contacts, building honest relationships of trust and entering new worlds.  Observing and listening.  I like to be a fly on the wall in the world I’m writing about.  It’s the only way I know how to make something truly authentic.
BEV: What was it that made you want to tell your latest story through the eyes of a male?

SEH: I was spending a lot of time with groups of boys in a very macho world.  These boys put so much pressure upon themselves to be a “man”.  Their masculinity interested me and their homophobia appalled me.  A male character who is exploring his sexuality in this alpha-male world interested me.  As did the fact that to many Arabs they would rather have a son, a brother, who is a terrorist than gay.  I wanted to explore what it means to be a man to these boys.

BEV: You took part in Birds Eye View’s She Writes Lab (in partnership with Script Factory). Can you tell us a bit about it? What was the most important thing you learned from that experience?

She Writes was a screenwriting scheme for women to help readdress the awful statistic that only 12% of screenwriters in the UK are women.  Some people say there aren’t more women coming up in the industry because other women get jealous of them and won’t give them breaks.  I don’t think that’s the case AT ALL.  The scheme was an extremely encouraging and supportive environment.  I consider the other screenwriters on the scheme as friends and I’m genuinely happy about their successes.  The statistic that horrifies me even more is that only 6% of film directors in the UK are women.  I think it says a lot about British society as a whole.  There isn’t economic parity between the sexes and many of our industries are sexist. I’m often asked about the fact that I’m a woman directing a movie about men.  This irritates me because I’m a filmmaker before I’m a female filmmaker.  Many male directors, like Almodovar for example, can make movies about women without anybody reacting.

BEV: You not only directed but also wrote MBTD. How did this feel – did you find yourself re-writing as you went along?

SEH: I never stopped rewriting the script for the five years it took to make the movie.  I was even rewriting while we were shooting. And then reconstructing the film in the edit.  They say that a film is never finished, only ever abandoned.  That’s definitely my experience.  There comes a moment when the time and money runs out and you’re forced to stop.  I’m too much of a perfectionist to ever be “done” at any stage of the process.  I’m always striving to make it better.

BEV: With your incredible success at Sundance and Berlin this year, 2012 is already a massive year for you. Do you feel your life changing? What has been the highlight of these past two months?

SEH: The highlight has been finally making the movie and sharing it with audiences.  The critical success and reviews are wonderful in terms of my “career”, but the real buzz is when you know that your film has connected with ordinary people.  That’s the thing that makes all of the pain of making the movie suddenly seem worthwhile.  It’s what makes me want to do it all over again.

BEV: This must be the question on those movie moguls lips: do you have any other projects on the cards already?

SEH: Of course.  You have to have a few projects on the go because it’s so hard to make a movie these days.  You can’t be certain which one will be “next”.  The one I’m currently most excited about is another London movie, but a completely different world to My Brother The Devil.

We are delighted that Sally El Hosaini will be a guest speaker at the Birds Eye View International Women’s Day Gala at the NFT1 BFI Southbank on March 8th.

Tickets are on sale now from the BFI: http://tiny.cc/idsio