Mehdi Fikri signs a first public utility film. It tells, from the inside, the tragedy of those who fight to have one of their own recognized as the victim of police blunders.
Malika (Camélia Jordana), who sells in the markets with her companion Adel (Sofian Khammes), receives a first phone call. His brother Driss (Sofiane Zermani) tells him that the other boy of the siblings, Karim (Larry) has been arrested by the police. She quickly hangs up, exasperated by the disagreements of the young man with whom she has cut ties precisely because of his propensity to create them.
A few hours later, the young woman received another call. This time, Driss tells him that Karim is in the hospital. He won’t come out. For Malika, it is the start of a battle whose adversaries are almost all-powerful since they belong to the police. Mehdi Fikri tells the story of a fight that is both personal and family in his first film, Before the flames go out, in theaters November 15.
A family that cannot mourn
Karim, according to the police, died as a result “a seizure due to drug use”in other words of an epileptic attack which puts “harmless” the police in this tragedy. It doesn’t take much more to set this city of Strasbourg on fire where Malika’s family, of Algerian origin, lives. For his friends and the young people in the neighborhood who are demonstrating, there is no doubt that “It is the police (Who) killed” Karim. His father wants to bury him as quickly as possible but the young man’s body has become evidence, they learn from a local political activist played by Samir Guesmi.
Before the flames go out is an inspired fiction “very real stories from our families”, can we read before the end credits of the film. Watching this feature film is to delve into the cases of police repression which go wrong and which have made the headlines since the early 90s in France. Like the death of Adama Traoré on July 19, 2016 in Beaumont-sur-Oise (Val-d’Oise) after a violent arrest or, recently, that of Nahel Merzouk killed by the shooting of a police officer, in Nanterre, on June 27, 2023.
A painful obstacle course
Finding out how to denounce police misconduct, finding a lawyer – Malika must run after Maître Harchi (Makita Samba) so that he accepts her case –, taking legal action and providing yourself with the financial and human resources are the challenges faced by all these bereaved families. The transformation of the eldest of the family, Malika, into a legal specialist and media muse is meticulously described in a concise setting. Especially since it must be done in a limited space-time to which the title of the film refers.
Mehdi Fikri does not forget to mention the sacrificial dimension, embodied by Driss, that involves the fight that all the Davids lead against the Goliaths because the police have difficulty recognizing the wrongs of their own. Camélia Jordana chose to play Malika with stoicism, thus instilling in her an unfailing composure, which transpires in the scene from which the profile photo used for the poster of the fiction is taken. Which gives real intensity to the young woman’s desire to obtain justice for a brother, who was obviously not a saint, but whose most basic rights were violated during his arrest.
The accuracy of a set
What Fikri says in Before the flames go out has been mentioned numerous times in the media. As such, the viewer could feel jaded upon discovering his work. However, the film grips the guts because it depicts in images the drama of all these lives lost because of the crime of facial appearance – sometimes summarized in the consecrated expression “known to the police”. Fikri makes the viewer a privileged witness, giving them access to the inaccessible, namely the emotions and questions of each member of a family played by a set of actors whose performance rings true.
“I wrote about what I know. Films about cited are often tragedies, in the ancient sense of the term: with powerless characters who end up broken by an environment stronger than them”, notes Mehdi Fikri, screenwriter who was a journalist at Humanity, where he covered police violence. With his first fiction, he definitively gives them the right to be included.
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The sheet
Gender : drama
Director: Mehdi Fikri
Distribution : Camélia Jordana, Sofiane Zermani, Sofian Khammes, Sonia Faidi, Makita Samba and Samir Guesmi
Country : France
Duration : 1h36
Exit : November 15, 2023
Distributer : Bac Films
Synopsis: Following the death of her little brother during a police arrest, Malika launches into a legal fight so that a trial can take place. But his quest for truth endangers the balance of his family.