Moroccan-Belgian Directors Premiere "Rebel" Film on Daesh Recruitment in Rabat

"Rebel" tells the story of young people who join the Daesh camps. The two directors are happy with the work done on a small budget. Even though they have Belgian nationality, they confide that they feel more Moroccan and therefore happy to have been able to premiere "Rebel" in Rabat. "Our family and our heritage come from here. So being able to make a film like this with also Moroccan lead actors and show it here to a Moroccan audience, that’s the most important thing because we consider this a Moroccan film. It’s a great honor," said Adil El Arbi to Aujourd’hui Le Maroc.

As for Bilal Fallah, he says he is very concerned about the subject addressed in this film: the young people who join the Daesh camps. A story that, according to him, touches them personally. "I know people who left, neighbors, friends, people I loved. The fact of seeing people who are the same as us, as Moroccan Muslims from Belgium, who went to Syria and that they came back, or even that they made an attack, it was very confrontational." In fact, there are not really many series and films that are made by Muslims. This point of view was very important for us to tell," he stressed.

The directors would have liked to shoot scenes in Morocco, but the coronavirus compromised their plan and the filming took place in Jordan. After the premiere screening, some critics found the film long. For the two directors, the story is long and they had to make many cuts to reach a 2h15 film, which at the beginning was 4h. "This is the first time we’re showing the film to an audience. We haven’t had the chance yet so it’s interesting to get feedback. It was difficult to go from 4 hours to 2h15. But it’s a big complex story that we’re trying to tell."

Despite the length of the film, it will not have required as large a budget as one might have imagined. "It’s twelve times less than a Hollywood movie, than a ’Bad Boys’. For a Belgian budget, it’s maybe a lot but in the world of cinema, it’s not huge. On the Belgian side, it’s 8 million euros. But a French comedy costs 12 million euros. But we are less than that," they stressed.