‘Who Do I Belong To’ Director Talks Magical Realism, Family Tensions in ISIS Drama
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Meryam Joobeur’s Who Do I Belong To (Mé el Aïn) offers a timely perspective on war in the Middle East as her Arabic language ISIS drama about a family in turmoil premieres in competition at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival.
The Canadian-Tunisian director deftly threads the themes of conflict, family and identity in a fantastical drama that centers on Aicha, a Tunisian mother played by Salha Nasraoui and greatly relieved to see her eldest son Mehdi (Malek Mechergui) unexpectedly return from fighting for the Islamic State in Syria.
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But Aicha must deal with her husband Brahim (Mohamed Hassine Grayaa) feeling anger over their son’s betrayal for leaving their rural farm in Tunisia to embrace a violent war and return without his brother Amine and with a mysterious pregnant wife at his side. Soon, the presence of Mehdi and his niqab-clad wife casts a dark shadow that threatens to consume a tiny Tunisian village.
Joobeur says the elements of magical realism she seamlessly blends into her feature to capture a mother’s trauma over her sons are deeply personal. “Her (Aicha’s) journey of connecting to her subconscious and her dream language is something I lived through making the film,” Joobeur recalls as she had, while going through an upheaval in her own life, used hypnosis and dream interpretations as a form of spiritual healing.
“I didn’t set out to make a magical realistic film. It just happened,” Joobeur tells The Hollywood Reporter as she switches from naturalism to magical realism when taking a feminist perspective as she portrays Aicha and Reem, Mehdi’s mysterious wife played by Dea Liane, in the film. And while the Islamic State is only a distant backdrop for the drama, Joobeur insists Who Do I Belong To looks to have audiences ask why war and conflict bring out the worst in people.
It’s a question that has long preoccupied the filmmaker, who is based in Montreal, but grew up stateside. “I grew up mostly in the U.S. and remember being fascinated by the history of slavery. How could that happen?” she says.
“Yes, Daesh (also known as ISIS) is the context, but the film is really more about what drives people to do such extreme violent acts,” Joobeur adds. The impetus for Who Do I Belong To also came after the filmmaker, while in Tunisia in 2016, noticed that country had become a major source of recruits for ISIS in Syria and other Middle East war zones.
“There was no clear profile for the men who went to fight for Daesh. They were very diverse. You had sons of doctors, maybe someone who dropped out of school, people with no history of violence at all,” Joobeur recalls.
An initial 2018 short film Brotherhood, which was nominated for an Oscar and from which Who Do I Belong To emerged as an expanded feature version, followed Joobeur and longtime director of photography and collaborator Vincent Gonneville having a chance encounter in Tunisia in February 2017 while scouting for another movie.
One day, Joobeur and Gonneville crossed paths with two red-haired and freckled-faced Tunisian brothers, Malek and Chaker Mechergui, as they led their father’s sheep to pasture. “I only said, ‘hello’ to them and, ‘Can I take your photo?’ I didn’t even know their names, I had no clue,” the filmmaker recalls.
But Joobeur couldn’t shake the image of the brothers in her head, and a year later she returned to the same remote region of northern Tunisia to find the young men so they might star in her short film Brotherhood, which she wrote with the brothers in mind.
“It was strange. I couldn’t let it go. I wrote the script quickly and had even written in a third little brother. And when I went looking for them, [Rayen Mechergui] was the first one who came out of the house,” Joobeur recounted.
Eventually, the three brothers overcame their initial reticence to star in Brotherhood, and the feature extension Who Do I Belong To shot in their Tunisian village in 2022. “The three of them are really incredible actors. Especially with the feature, they’ve evolved into becoming professional actors. It’s been a gift to witness and support,” she added.
But the fulcrum for the Canada-France-Tunisia co-production about a family at war with itself remains Aicha, a mother struggling to reconnect with a son she thought had died, while needing to find the truth of Mehdi’s journey to and from war. As Aicha questions Mehdi with increasing urgency, Joobeur’s camera captures her tortured face with centered closeups and dark and disturbing results, even having the mother see and hear things via vivid prophetic dreams.
In the end, Who Do I Belong To is a meditation on death and relationships between sons and mothers but with little in the way of reconciliation and forgiveness. “For Aicha, the big internal struggle as a mother is how do you face the things you don’t want to see about the ones you love,” Joobeur explains.
But as her maternal instincts suggest abandoning that struggle, Aicha eventually answers prophetic visions calling on her to find the truth. “She doesn’t want to see, but her subconscious keeps telling her there’s something there, keep looking. … Because there’s peace in knowing the truth, even if the truth is difficult,” Joobeur adds.
While the film’s director is excited about premiering Who Do I Belong To in Berlin, Joobeur awaits word on whether the Mechergui brothers can surmount bureaucratic hurdles and secure visas in time to leave Tunisia and walk the red carpet at her side outside the Berlinale Palast for the Feb. 22 gala screening.
“If they don’t come, the experience will not be full for me. It’s going to feel bittersweet because the entire journey started with them,” Joobeur explains.
Luxbox Films will be shopping Who Do I Belong To among international buyers at the European Film Market.
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