In a neighborhood of Montreal where gentrification has not yet struck, the destinies of Max, a dead-end thirtysomething, and Fouad, a teenager with a thousand challenges, keep intersecting. However, everyone lives on their own, the so-called “native” Quebecer and the 15-year-old Moroccan immigrant seeming to exist in separate worlds, in a vacuum. If they spoke to each other, they would find, like us who see them evolve on the screen, that they have a lot in common. Against the backdrop of racial tensions and socio-economic inequities, Onur Karaman explores in his film Breathe the multiple facets of the Quebec identity.
Winner of the prize for best Quebec film at the Cinemania festival this fall, Breathe is the filmmaker’s fourth feature film.
“I wanted to talk about latent racism, social disparities… And I wanted to talk to young people who don’t necessarily find themselves in the cinema – the Max, the Fouad – and show them that we are basically very similar despite our differences”, explains Onur Karaman, who arrived in Quebec from Turkey at the age of eight.
This is something I repeat often. But I didn’t want to adopt a moralizing tone. Rather, I wanted to infuse the film with a thriller dimension. To be a bit more frontal this time around, as opposed to my more meditative approach in my previous films.
These issues, presented differently, were already present in his first films, The human farm and Where Attila passes.
“It’s something I say often. But I didn’t want to adopt a moralizing tone. Rather, I wanted to infuse the film with a thriller dimension. To be a bit more frontal this time around, as opposed to my more meditative approach in my previous films. It’s not a street film, but there is that. In fact, there are several genres, I think. »
It’s the case.
Personal component
Like Onur Karaman’s previous film, The guilty, Breathe takes on a choral dimension, the myriad of characters orbiting Max and Fouad turning out to be united in often unexpected ways (subsidiary, professional, etc.). Each and everyone deals with their flaws and sorrows…
“I didn’t want all-good or all-bad characters, because reality is always more complex and more nuanced than that. I wanted to show the environment, the context, along with this family from Quebec and this family of Moroccan immigrants. Nobody is super happy there: they all bathe in their loneliness and try to do their best. »
Again, the film dwells on deep similarities beyond superficial differences.
“As soon as we are stuck in a social class, we always have more in common than we think. »
Thus Max experiences frustrations in his job in customer service, while Atif, Fouad’s father, has to content himself with managing a snack bar, he who is an engineer by training. Another common point: Fouad, we discover between two spats at school, has a gift for writing, while Maryse, Max’s mother, is an author…
So many opportunities for rapprochement wasted because no one speaks or looks at each other; not really.
“About Fouad’s father, it doesn’t come out of nowhere: it’s my youth,” says Onur Karaman. When I was a child, we were very comfortable. My father was a director of large construction sites. We were constantly traveling between Turkey and Algeria. He wanted to live an adventure in a French-speaking country, and it was played out between France and Canada. He chose Canada, Quebec, but without knowing that we would find ourselves at the bottom of the social ladder. It was not the adventure he expected. »
To specify Onur Karaman, his father took, after returning to school, about fifteen years to get back into engineering, but never at the same levels.
basic goodness
Does this result in a dark portrait? Perhaps it is relevant to refer here to a scene from the film in which Max criticizes a cousin (an aspiring author, you know) for having a vision of the romantic world, while congratulating himself for being realistic. To which the cousin replies: “Realistic or pessimistic? »
However, in discussing with Onur Karaman, and despite the dramatic turn taken by the action of his film, the answer is beyond doubt.
“I believe that humans are fundamentally good: that’s the message of the film. My wish ? I would like it to be seen as much by young native Quebecers as by young people from diverse backgrounds. »