Writer & Director
Born in the 1980s, I consider myself much more a child of The Clash of Civilisations than of the Cold War. The 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan were the most influential political events in my life. Growing up in Germany and being raised in an Afghan family in the Muslim tradition, I often felt torn between two worlds. This might be the reason why, similar to the characters in The Slap, I followed the rise of the Arab Spring with mixed feelings. Yes, euphoria and hope on the one hand, but also doubt and reluctance on the other. Global politics and changes in societies as profound as those that took place in 2010/11 are extremely complex. This is the reason why we chose a multi-plot structure for The Slap. We wanted to look at the Tunisian revolution from different dramatic angels in order get the bigger picture behind these events.
Our formal approach is not documentary, but rather dramatic. We chose the genre of political drama inspired by films like The Battle Of Algiers by Pontecorvo or the early films by Costa-Gavras. We are going to give our story a plot driven pace, carried by strong characters and highly emotional human stories.The visual language will be a mixture of intense handheld camera and precise sequence shots that will carry the audience and draw them close to the images, sounds and atmosphere of the revolution.
Writer
As the writer of The Slap, I am particularly interested in two aspects of our story. Firstly, I like to examine the ambivalent role of Europe that supported the dictatorships in North Africa to assert their economic and political interest and focus on the different ways Europeans look at Tunisia and the societies in North Africa. Secondly, I am interested in exploring the Tunisian society at the point of its upheaval. I was born in East Berlin and experienced the breakdown of the socialist system during the so called “peaceful revolution“ and I see a lot of parallels in the nature of the repressive systems of Tunisia and the GDR as well as in their break-up.
Both were societies in which repression was rarely reflected by violence. It was more a tight net of surveillance through a huge secret service which created an atmosphere of mistrust that oozed into all aspects of life and poisoned the relationships of the people. Moreover, these dictatorships provided a feeling of social and police security, offered health care, education and increased the equality between men and women. Many people supported the systems for these reasons and thus living in these countries was a life of mixed feelings.