French-Jewish writer-director Karin Albou assumed that the Algerian side of her family had been untouched by World War II. Then she came across the letters that her grandfather, a doctor in the French Army, had written to her grandmother from a German POW camp.
He was held for four years, Albou’s grandmother explained, protected by his French citizenship at the very same time the Vichy regime was stripping Algerian Jews of theirs.
“I learned all this when I was 20,” Albou recalls, “and I was shocked that the Second World War [affected] the former French colonies of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, and that the French government can decide that this one is not French anymore, that Jews are not French anymore.”
The plight of European Jews during the war was taught in French schools, but Albou had to do her own research to discover that the Nazis occupied Tunisia for six months.
That historical reality provides the background of her second film, The Wedding Song, as well as the external pressure that threatens to destroy the lifelong friendship between two Jewish and Muslim teenagers. An artful, evocative story of women navigating dangerous times, The Wedding Song screens March 14 in the Seattle Jewish Film Festival.
“I didn’t want to make a political film, and that’s why I portrayed this friendship in a period film,” Albou related over coffee at her hotel when she presented her film last summer at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. “If I would have made this same story with Palestinians and Israelis, it would have been very complicated because there’s no distance.
“I didn’t want to make a political movie, but I understand through many people’s reaction that the film is still political,” she says with one of her frequent laughs.
Albou is referring to the reviews and post-screening Q&As after The Wedding Song opened in France in December 2008. In particular, she drew criticism from some corners for the film’s opening montage of archival newsreel footage, including a picture of Hitler with the smiling Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
“Some French people were upset — not the Arabs,” Albou explains. “Some French people are more pro-Arab than the Arabs themselves. They said, “˜You did a Zionist movie’ and stuff like that. An Arab man stood up [at one screening] and said, “˜No, she did the right thing. We have to talk about that. As an Arab, I think it’s very important to show these pictures.’ It’s interesting that it’s French people, not the Arab people, that were shocked or embarrassed by these photos. They don’t want to know that it happened.”
There’s a scene in The Wedding Song of the occupying Germans dropping anti-Jewish leaflets on Tunis. The implication is that by raising the specter of anti-Semitism, the Nazis instigate the tension between Muslims and Jews.
“In any culture, you can have dark sides that are buried because people live together,” Albou says. “As soon as propaganda comes and says this one is the bad guy, all the inner dark side rises up. I think there was some anti-Semitism in France, too, but very underneath. You can have tension, but the war suddenly makes everything on fire.”
Albou didn’t set out to construct a parable about current Arab-Jewish relations, but to tell a story about female friendship during a time in North Africa that had never been depicted onscreen. It’s difficult not to consider the film’s contemporary resonance, though.
“In France we don’t really have problems living together,” she relates. “When there’s a conflict in Israel, there’s an invisible border and then one is pro-Palestinian and one is pro-Israeli and this is the crack. It’s like in the movie: The [girls] are together and suddenly the war shows up and they are put on completely different sides in spite of themselves. They don’t understand what’s happening to them.”
Albou is married to an Israeli and divides her time between Tel Aviv and Paris. She works in France, though one wonders if she might be working on a screenplay set in Israel.
“For the moment, no, but I would love one day to make an Israeli movie, and to make an American movie in Los Angeles,” she volunteers with another laugh.
Talk with the director: A past revealed
