Aya is a young Ivorian teenager who lives in Lahou-Kpanda, a peninsula located in the south-east of Côte d’Ivoire, a few kilometers from the economic capital, Abidjan. His small village has been eaten away for years by the sea, due to global warming. Her mother is worried about Aya, much to the chagrin of the young girl who seems to apply only one rule: CArpe Diem (enjoying the present moment). Ayah, the first fiction feature by Belgian filmmaker Simon Coulibaly Gillard, with its blue and pink tones, with the sweetness of innocence. And from a dream from which we always end up waking up. Marie-Josée Degny Kokora, who plays Aya, gives the teenager a foolproof composure. The young girl thus seems both nonchalant, disconnected and combative. The viewer effortlessly follows Aya’s adventures in a collapsing world. Interview with Simon Coulibaly Gillard, the director Aya.
What brought you to Lahou, this peninsula located in Ivory Coast, where the destiny of your heroine is played out?
All my work as a filmmaker took place in West Africa, particularly in Burkina Faso. I have been making films in the sub-region for about ten years. But I thought it would be time to make a film at home, in Belgium, but I couldn’t. Out of spite, I gave myself a break by going to West Africa to see some friends, my assistant with whom I made all my films, Lassina Coulibaly who is Burkinabè. His stories took me to Côte d’Ivoire, a country I had never visited. I bought with him, in Abidjan [la capitale économique]a car with the hope of making a huge tour of Côte d’Ivoire.
But after a little over 200 km, the car broke down in front of the pier which leads to the island of Lahou-Kpanda. The first few days I was angry while trying to fix this car. And then, I ended up accepting the situation and got on a boat. I arrived in Lahou one evening around 6 p.m., it was sunset on the island. People were lying in the sand, lit by candlelight and there were coconut trees everywhere. The sand was fine, people were singing and I said to myself: “Wow”, it’s a paradise! I had a smile that scratched my ears…
I slept there and, the next morning, I went to introduce myself to the village chief who showed me around the island. He took me through the cemetery and I didn’t understand what I was seeing: men were breaking up the graves in broad daylight. They finally explained to me. The village chief took me to the shore and there I saw the tombstones being washed away in the low waves. I then understood that the paradise I had hoped for the day before no longer existed. This unspeakable and inadmissible thing – having to dig up and bury your own dead again, go through a second mourning – I had to bear witness to it in the film and so I didn’t leave. I stayed a little less than a year with all the people on the island to try to make this film with them.
aya is presented as a docu-fiction. The film has indeed something of the documentary which is reinforced by this very natural presence of Marie-Josée Degny Kokora who embodies Aya. How do you let people live while directing them, especially on a first feature film?
It’s actually my first feature film, where I more easily accept fiction. It is above all a contract of honesty vis-à-vis Marie-Josée and her mother. In my films, there is always a documentary terrain. In aya, everything is true: I did not write a screenplay in Belgium to go and apply it in the Ivory Coast. It is indeed the stories of this village that are filmed. However, Aya and Marie-Josée are two different people. Marie-Josée plays the role of Aya and much more. The fiction lies in the fact that the screenplay is written by several hands. An uncle, a neighbor or even a grandmother tell a story and I want to see it in the film. And the only way to achieve this is to bring it to life for my heroine Aya, who then becomes the spokesperson for this island. This is how fiction is woven. I worked with people who all come from the village and who had never made a film, both the technicians and those I filmed, and suddenly it requires a lot of patience. We educated each other. Me, I educated them on the camera and they educated me on how to integrate this camera into their world. This is why filming lasts almost a year, whereas on traditional feature films, five weeks of filming is more than enough.
You explain that the choice of Marie-Josée Degny Kokora was obvious. Why ?
When I auditioned Marie-Josée, I really liked her posture, the way she spoke: she didn’t go to school a lot and therefore she didn’t address me as you. Humanly, I liked the person. Marie-Josée said yes right away when I asked her if she wanted to make a film with me. But I immediately warned her that the opinion of the camera was also needed. We shot a little test scene in which I asked her to argue with her little sister, with whom she was making small bundles in the forest, until the latter started to cry and ran away in tears. And Marie-Josée succeeded. I like to tell this story, which may seem cruel, but which makes one very important thing explicit: to be an actor is to admit that the camera is above everything. Marie-Josée understood this immediately, as did being at the service of the character of Aya.
And with her, it’s her whole family, especially her mother that you have also chosen. How did you work with them?
The staging is very discreet and allows Marie-Josée and her mother, when necessary, to take refuge in concrete actions, such as eating a fish. [une scène du film]. It’s also improvisation in their language [avikam] around themes that I proposed to them such as the absence of the father or money problems… At that time, I don’t know what was being said. I have to trust them because I don’t know until I have the translation of the exchange.
The world around Aya is collapsing but she gives the impression that it has no hold on her. It is this levity that his mother reproaches him for. What is this character’s ID?
I wanted a stubborn character and I met a young girl who really was. Which reinforced my desire to develop this character who firmly believes that his destiny is not his destiny, in the vein of tragedy. I also learned a lot from the relationship that this girl has with her mother. Once they were auditioned, 80% of the film was done. This mother who is worried about her daughter and this daughter who does not want to see the problem, it immediately creates tension and suffering.
Your film is about an island victim of global warming. However, the story of this teenager, which is intimately linked to this collapse, very quickly eclipses the environmental issue…
As a filmmaker, what interests me in this story is the fate of men. For me, aya is above all an intimate story about the end of childhood. The disappearance of this island is only a metaphor for the childhood that goes away under Aya’s feet. It’s the movie I wanted to make, but that doesn’t mean it’s the movie people see. Everything is possible.
Looks like a blue and pink movie when you watch Aya. How did you work on the photo?
The photography is done entirely in natural light and therefore has its limits in terms of color. I knew I wanted to make a film in two chapters, between the naturalness of this island and the superficiality of Abidjan, the economic capital. The film has two totally opposite aesthetics. The image is initially extremely soft, pastel, not very saturated and then the colors are electric: it’s neon, fluorescent… it’s harder. The film is also blue and pink because we chose a loincloth for Aya where there is a pattern, a kind of flower, blue and pink. The loincloths she wears are mostly in these tones.