Palestinian director Rakan Mayasi is in Cannes with his first feature “Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep,” about two Bedouin sisters named Rim and Jahawer contending with patriarchal rituals in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
Shot without a script and with a cast of non-professionals, Mayasi’s feature debut – that premiered in Un Certain Regard – comes after the director, who studied with Abbas Kiarostami and Béla Tarr, made a splash with several shorts. Most notably “Bonboné” that depicted the phenomenon of Palestinian sperm smuggling from Israeli jails and bowed in 2017 in Toronto.
Mayasi’s observational feature, praised by Variety critic Tomris Laffly as “powerful and atmospheric” starts with a truck that has been set on fire by a young woman who has gone missing. An incident which, in turn, ends up sparking trouble for Rim and Jahwer.
Variety speaks to Mayasi about the fly on the wall process he used to make “Eye Didn’t Sleep” as Israeli jets on occasion bombed the Bekaa Valley. An experience he describes as both “an act of existence” and “resistance.”
As I understand it, the inspiration for this is film came from your grandmother. Am I right?
Yes, basically she was forced to get married at 14, due to what I’d like to see as a complex [patriarchal] tradition. And I always had this idea that I wanted to make a film as a tribute to her, also because she helped raise me as a child. The first organic experience [with this project] was a short film called “Trumpets in the Sky,” also shot in the Bekaa Valley, but with a different group. My grandmother passed away before the “”Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep” shoot. This gave me more power to continue and make it as a strong homage to her.
Talk to me about your research process and working with non-professional actors
The research was collective research that I did over three years and a half. First of all, I met the fixer for whom I had plenty of questions about what path I was going to follow [with the storyline]. Some of his answers were going parallel with mine, and some were not. So I had to meet several tribes, because every time I went to a tribe, they would inform me of a slightly different answer to how they saw this or that. Or how they would deal with a specific situation. And so I never had one Bible, let’s say, or one answer that covered everything. Ultimately, the story was collectively researched with the actors. You know, I met the actors, who are obviously non actors. Who are village inhabitants. I met them while scouting on location. I totally fell in love with this family, and we built trust together built over time. Over the course of these three years and a half, I would continuously fly to Lebanon for several of reasons, one of them being the film. And I would visit this family. One time when I returned to Lebanon I heard this real story that happened about a girl who had gone missing, and was accused of burning a truck. This is a real story that happened, and I used it with their permission.
I’d love to hear more about working with the non professional actors, the whole process of that.
I was extremely lucky meeting this family. They are more open, because they used to live in the south, and then they moved [to the Bekaa Valley]. And they were extremely excited to participate. So it began with Jawaher, the nurse in the hospital who is an actual nurse. I just went to the hospital and tryed not to intrude. The whole idea was to be able to base the character on who they are in real life. So they can just be in this situation. Their motivation is clear and your direction is clear. In terms dialogue, it was completely improvised on set, which was actually very demanding, because there’s very little time to set up. Seriously, if it wasn’t for this group or family playing the primary characters, I probably wouldn’t have made the film. They are extremely intelligent, very intuitive. And, you know, they sometimes directed me.
Talks to me about the actual logistics and practical aspects of of doing the production work.
We were a crew of, I think twelve people, sometimes fifeteen, because of certain equipment. But the there was no tracking shots, no Dolly. Nothing. No big machinery. It was just a tripod and a few lenses, zoom lenses, because every time we shot I wanted to zoom, I didn’t want to track. And, yeah, like, a very basic, minimalist approach. Not just because we had a low budget, but because it was a real decision not to have lots of equipment. Because, you know, this community is not used to filmmaking, so they are not aware of it, and they don’t have to be. And I adapted to that. In the beginning, it was meant to be an 18-day shoot, but then I realised that shooting seven scenes a day was going to give me a heart attack, so we extended it to 23 days.
What was it like shooting in the Bekaa Valley where Israel has conducted repeated air strikes?
First of all, I lived 17 years in Lebanon. My grandmother was Lebanese. So I also became a filmmaker in Lebanon. It’s a country that I feel I belong to, although my citizenship is not Lebanese. We were filming in a moment of so-called ceasefire. But it was ceasefire from one side. Israeli jets were still bombing in Syria and further away in Lebanon. It was not directly next to us, but behind the mountain where we were filming. At times I had to repeat takes twice because of the sound of an explosion over the dialogue. Obviously when these attacks happen on Lebanon, our hearts are shattered. We don’t know why we risk continuing to shoot. The stress of having to live with the idea that the war can erupt again, on a bigger scale, is very hard to bear. Every day is horrible. Obviously war is catastrophic, and Israel attacking Lebanon is in no way acceptable. So making this film was was an act of existence, an act of resistance.
As a member of the of the Lebanese film community, do you think the more recent, and more intense, Israeli attacks will have have a greater impact on filmmakers than previous ones, besides just the economic crisis and general turbulence in Lebanon?
The most recent Israeli attacks have been the biggest since I don’t know when. A lot of villages in the South have been completely erased. A fellow filmmaker friend of mine, who comes from one of these villages, had his house completely destroyed, grazed to the ground. So now there is no trace of all that memory that he had since childhood. Of course it’s horrible. I don’t know what more to say, because it so occupies my spirit, my soul, my mind, that I somehow fail to express it. I’m Palestinian, so it’s my two countries that are being destroyed.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
English (US) ·