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| Fahd Larhzaoui and Emmanuel Ohene Boafo in The Love (El Houb) Photo: courtesy of Shariff Nasr |
What do you do if your family refuses to accept your sexuality, or tells you that you ought to keep it secret? Is there a way of forcing conversation to happen? And how can that be complicated by religion and the additional pressures of life in small communities? Shariff Nasr’s The Love (El Houb), which is screening as part of Newfest 2022, sees its hero Karim (Fahd Larhzaoui) literally shut himself in a closet in the family home, refusing to leave it until his parents are willing to talk. What follows blends elements of comedy and tragedy as flashbacks address issues in his past and everyone in the household wrestles with complicated emotions.
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| Shariff Nasr Photo: Curly X Straight |
“The idea for the film came when I was visiting family,” he tells me when we connect at the start of the New York-based festival. “All the family members were so loving and giving the best food and everything, and everyone offering their house to stay, but after a while, I was wondering what would happen if I would feel attracted to men? Would all these loving family members suddenly love me less? And I don't believe that, but I know it would cause trouble. I realised that we always see the same story in the media, when it comes to LGBTQ stories in the MENA community – Middle Eastern and North African – you either seem to choose for your family or your sexuality. As if there is no other option. And I thought, ‘Yeah, but what if you want both?’ It’s not that black or white, that there is just that and nothing else. So that was actually the start of the idea for this film.”
There’s a moment early on, before Karim goes into the closet, when he walks out of the house but sees neighbours staring at him and seems to suddenly realise that it’s not only his family but his whole community which he’s at risk of losing.
“Of course,” he says. “One of the things is that he realised ‘When I leave, we're not going to talk about it ever again.’ And of course, community is always the thing that everyone talks about, like, ‘Yeah, but what will the neighbours say? What will the community say? Yeah, you know, they won't like it.’ But when I talk to people individually, I always hear: ‘I don't have a problem with it, but the others…’ That made me realise ‘If all the individuals don't have a problem. Then who are the others?’
“According to a research in the Netherlands 80% of the Dutch Moroccan people here said they think homosexual people should live their life in the way they want to, and only 9% of the Moroccan Dutch people say they shouldn't live their life as they want to. So only 9% is against it.”
That’s one of the questions which lingers throughout the film: are Karim’s parents really hostile to his sexuality or are they just afraid of what the neighbours might say?
“Yeah, if look at hose numbers, I think it is pretty hopeful” he says. “Probably most of it is because people just think ‘I want my child to have an easy life.’ So I think the problem is the dialogue and that's what this film is all about: finding the dialogue.”
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| Lubna Azabal and Slimane Dazi Photo: courtesy of Shariff Nasr |
There's also some wonderful comedy in there, built around the community and the parents’ efforts to fit in.
He nods. “there is a lot of humour in the Arab community, but also in life. I've had funerals where in the end, we were all laughing out loud. And then you would think ‘but this is not the setting for humour.’ So yeah, that is one side. But also I think humour is a big weapon to fight for social issues, because people tend to be more comfortable to laugh about their own biases than if you really confront them with their flaws. When you start laughing: ‘Yeah, yeah, I can be like that, too.’”
The humour is also part of what lets us see the warmth and love within the family.
“That's true. The whole film is about love. When you really start to get to know all these family members, and what is the reason why they think the way they do, the basis is love. And that's why during the making of the film, we renamed it El Houb.”
We talk about the closet in the film. What did that mean for Shariff as a director? How did he organise and film that space?
“There was a tough decision, how are we going to shoot this,” he says. “I also wanted the cupboard to be a place that resembles his state of mind, so it shrinks and becomes bigger, and it throws him into memories, just like in your own life. It's how the very sensory style came to life, everything flows organically: just like in a conversation, your mind could suddenly drift off to another place. We really wanted that to happen in the film, so with the art director [Robert van der Hoop], we talked about it, and then the we came to the decision, it's best to build the house in the studio.
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| Nasrdin Dchar and Fahd Larhzaoui Photo: courtesy of Shariff Nasr |
“The whole interior of the house was actually built so that we had all the freedom of letting the cupboard change with Kareems mental state and also to create a better place for the actors to work in. That was another challenge: having all these dialogues with a door in between. When we were shooting the exterior shots, we saw that all the doors had these little windows in them. Suddenly the art director said ‘Shouldn't we make the same kind of window in the closet door? And that was a brilliant idea, because in that sense, the actors would still have contact through that window and that helps a lot with the acting. But still Fahd had to be in this little space most of the time.
“We wanted it to be a very vivid closet. We also built one that could turn around on its axis, although that effect is only in the film for a couple of seconds. All the walls were removable, and when the closet implodes and brings him into this traumatic event with his cousin, I wanted to suck the audience into that traumatic event. Like in real life: you don't want to go to those memories but the traumatic event doesn’t want to be pushed away anymore and there's no turning back. You have to face it.”
“We've chosen the closet not as a so called brilliant metaphor, but this place was a safe space when he was little, a place where he could hide when his father would be angry, and he would feel safe. But at the same time, it's also a place where he can barricade himself in the middle of the house. He has control of a lot, you can’t ignore him, and he hears and sees everything.’ And at the same time, it's also out of respect he wants to confront them: but he needs a door in between to go into this fight.
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| Fahd Larhzaoui and Emmanuel Ohene Boafo Photo: courtesy of Shariff Nasr |
“It's seen as very disrespectful in the MENA community to confront your parents like that. Most of the people I've spoken to never even told their parents that they were queer, but their coming-out was always in an indirect way. For example that the parents first asked many other questions before coming to the real question about their kids sexuality. Some of them even did not answer, and that not answering was enough to know. Arabs are specialists in reading between the lines”
There's a moment in the film when it's suggested to Karim that if he just had affairs with men on the side but married a woman, that would be okay.
“And that is the thing, the problem with not talking,” Shariff says. “If we don't talk about it, then these crazy solutions will pop up. With the idea that you reduce the amount of problems for the person involved, not realizing that the person who is suffering in silence is facing worse problems, like depressions or is living a, sometimes dangerous, double-life or worse: wants to step out of life. That’s why we need to talk”
A lot of the film is about the chemistry between the actors, making the family believable. How did he contribute to making that work? Did they have much time to rehearse together?
“When the actors who play the parents came in, Lubna is from Belgium, Slimane is from France,” he says “we had a very concentrated time to really go through the script. We did go through the whole script, and then everything except for the last scene, because for that scene Lubna and Slimane wanted everything to come naturally. But for all the rest, we did readings and rehearsals, and then while we were going through the script, asked questions like ‘Why am I doing this or doing that?’ ‘Shouldn't I say it in this way?’ ‘Maybe it is best if I say nothing at all in this scene?’ And so in that stage a lot of things were created, and everyone got their own voice. That is also very important.
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| Slimane Dazi and Fahd Larhzaoui Photo: courtesy of Shariff Nasr |
“I'm very, very pleased that it's being screened at Newfest. It's an honour to be shown in New York. And I'm very happy that the film also will be out in American cinemas soon. The theatrical release will probably start in California, but I hope that through these kinds of festivals, there will be a buzz that will spread out in the country, so that we can spread the love”
He’s currently working on a series for Dutch network television, he reveals, but the film is still taking up a lot of his time.
“I'm very involved with El Houb and what it is doing all over the world, and especially now it's just premiered here in our own country. It is important to be there for Q & A’s, talks and interviews to create dialogues with your audience. I am happy there is a buzz, but it's a difficult time for cinema. A lot of people are not going as much as to the cinema as they used to. We really need people to talk about it and spread the love again, so other people will go to the cinema instead of waiting to have it come to one of the streamers or TV, because if we all go and do that, these kinds of films won't be made in the future. The streamers will then take over and even though they make wonderful content, they are less focused on the cinematic aspects of a film like this, and then this would have been a total different movie and experience. So I hope people will spread the word, because then we get the dialogue and change we need. Spread the love / el houb.”
