“We had become a bit like the laboratory rats of radicalization. It was me and my colleagues who had to carry the weight of feeling that we had to resolve a situation that, from the start, did not concern us. Because we did not go to Syria, we did not join the Daesh clan, and therefore, we were just continuing our CEGEP, because it is a compulsory phase. »
From the first minutes of the documentary series Maisonneuve, ex-student Rayene Bouzitoun sets the table. She was not yet in CEGEP in 2015 when the police arrested, in the space of a few months, 11 students from Collège de Maisonneuve who were trying to join the Islamic State armed group in Syria. And yet, she suffered the consequences. “Being a young Arab Muslim studying at Collège de Maisonneuve, it was practically a direct shortcut to a typical representation of radicalization,” she explains to the camera.
After these events, which shook all of Quebec, an atmosphere of “fear and mistrust” reigned in this CEGEP, half of whose students are of Arab and Muslim origin, says Momo, a friendly corridor worker hired by the Collège de Maisonneuve to allow young people to express themselves and relieve tensions as part of the Vivre-ensemble pilot project.
A research shoot
“We weren’t that interested in the events of 2015, that wasn’t the point,” explains director Jean-Martin Gagnon in an interview with Duty. “It was really the reaction [qui nous intéressait], how we react as a host society, as an institution. »
For 80 days, in 2017-2018, his team filmed the daily lives of CEGEP students. The scenario was written as the young people spoke and as tensions emerged, explains the director. “It was like a research shoot, ultimately. We didn’t know where we were going. »
Of course he had an idea in mind. And the end result generally looks like he imagined. “We knew that this was going to be the conclusion, that there was no “radicalization office” at Collège de Maisonneuve. That it was not a nest of radicalization as it was presented to us in the media. »
In 2020, he directed a first feature film which was aimed more at a European audience. But with the series Maisonneuvehe goes further, notably by giving young people a voice again, five years later.
And it is this perspective, this critical feedback from young people on their journey at Collège de Maisonneuve which gives so much weight to the series. They have gained maturity, become aware of their own contradictions, question the certainties that inhabited them just a few years ago and lead to a reflection that is both lucid and personal on the challenges of integration.
Take the step towards the other
Over 6 25-minute episodes, we follow 5 CEGEP students and a few adults who work with them. Young people with North African roots, including young Rayene Bouzitoun, but also activists from the student association and police technology students. Young people with different origins and opinions, who try to find their place in a very specific space-time, halfway between the carefree childhood and the world of adults.
Their paths intersect in a context of strong tensions. Full of good intentions, but sometimes clumsily, they test the limits of living together through confrontations, strong opinions, their inexperience and their own prejudices. They explore, challenge and sometimes transgress the codes.
But they leave their comfort zone, make the effort to reach out to others. And this is the very essence of the series that the director is trying to put forward: that “the quibbles, the questionings and the criticisms” should not be perceived as something negative, but as a way to “move business forward”.
This is also what Rayene Bouzitoun, who tamed the frustration with the injustice that inhabited her at the time, believes. “One thing I notice, when I rewatch the scenes, is that frustration is something that we have to focus on, because it is the warning signal that something is not right,” she explains in an interview. “So I’m glad that, at this age, I developed the instinct to listen to that frustration. And when I see something that’s not right, to stand up and speak out. »
The experience she had at Collège de Maisonneuve “shaped” the person she is today, she confides. “After that season of my life, that’s when I decided to go into law. Initially, I wanted to go into medicine, but given the context in which I worked, I felt much more useful to my community as a lawyer than as a doctor. »
She is now doing her master’s degree in public policy at the University of Oxford, in England. And to hear her talk about integration, we see that she has lost neither her enthusiasm nor her critical sense.
Series Maisonneuve will be premiered as part of the Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma (RVQC) on February 22 at 8 p.m. at the Cinéplex Odéon Quartier Latin cinema. The director and certain protagonists will also participate in a round table at the Cinémathèque québécoise on 1er March at 6 p.m. The series will be available for free from February 23 on the nfb.ca website.