meeting with the Franco-Tunisian director of “Machtat”, Sonia Ben Slama

The 51st edition of the La Rochelle Cinema Festival (FEMA) takes place from June 30 to June 9. A tribute will be paid there to the Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, whose last film Olfa’s Daughters was in competition in May at Cannes. In addition to his five films, seven other works by Tunisian filmmakers will be screened.

Among them, Mashtatthe documentary of Sonia Ben Slama recently presented at Acid, parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival. The feature film immerses us in the daily life of two sisters, Najeh and Waffeh, and their personal quest for independence. This could seem acquired if we stick to the myth that surrounds their profession of musician, of “machtat”. Franco-Tunisian filmmaker Sonia Ben Slama, whom we met on the Croisette last May, talks to us about her heroines and her inclination for documentaries.

Franceinfo Culture: How did you hear about the “machtat”, these female musicians who host weddings in Tunisia?

Sonia BenSlama: I met them while making my first film, Everything is written (Mektoub, 2015). In this documentary, I told the story of my grandmother, her marriage and her repudiation by my grandfather in the 1950s, in a small town in Tunisia where my father grew up. At the same time, I was filming the wedding of one of my cousins. It was at the end of filming that I met them because they were the musicians at the wedding. I remember that they had a very strong effect on me because they seemed to me to be so free in their movement. There was something so assumed about their position. They handled money when it can be taboo. They impressed me a lot. So I contacted them again and that’s how the documentary was made.

You really film them in their daily lives and their intimacy. You mentioned their freedom but, in reality, behind all this there is a lot of suffering…

Of course: they are also free in a certain way because they talk about it. It is already a first form of freedom. In my first film, this word was very difficult. We were rather in the unsaid. Here, things are no longer implicit, they are formulated. We film them at very intimate moments indeed, very close.

Their daily life is also their profession. Mashtat is not an easy job. At one point, the mother is seen exclaiming that she is glad the party is over. The line is funny but it reflects their work…

It’s exhausting work: each wedding involves about five ceremonies and the “machtat” can have summers with around fifty weddings in two months. It’s very tiring. The first times I went back to see them, in August 2016, they had been in business for a month and a half. They gave off something mystical then: they are so charged with all the hopes of all the families, with all these songs and all these blessings. There is something a little magical. This summer atmosphere is also different from that which prevails in winter when they work much less.

The paradox is that they are asked to celebrate happy marriages and theirs are chaotic to say the least…

They are even downright unhappy. Their stories – I wouldn’t even say amorous because I don’t think it’s about that – their stories as couples are disastrous. Waffeh, the youngest of the sisters, with her violent husband and who finds herself trapped between four walls between her companion, her children, her sister and her mother who tell her contradictory things… Waffeh is totally under the influence of this very violent. Najeh, for her part, would like to find a man, perhaps even love. It’s a way of escaping this authority that weighs on her: she lives like a teenager when she is the eldest of the siblings. It is his brothers who dictate his behavior.

Reading the pitch of “Machtat”, we say to ourselves that we are going to be told about musicians but in the end we sweep away everything that women can experience today. What does your documentary say about the status of women?

It says a lot of things about the status of women in many places, in Europe, in the Western world and elsewhere of course. It’s very important to me that we don’t think that these women are going through what they are going through because they are in a corner of Provence, in Tunisia, a little backward. For me, what they experience refers to questions that animate many women everywhere and not only in North African countries, African or Southern countries. There is really something universal, certainly in a very exaggerated way because there is something rather tragic in these characters, on the condition of women, the presence of men and on the weight of society.

What relationship do they have with their art which appears as an outlet?

There is something a bit automatic: they always sing the same songs from ceremony to ceremony. They have a fixed repertoire. Nevertheless, Najeh sometimes tries to write songs. Their job makes them look badly in society but, at the same time, it gives them status. Thanks to him, they earn money, more than the women who remain agricultural workers in the summer. This is all a bit special.

When I said that I was making a film on the “machtat”, my father’s cousins ​​all told me: but they are not musicians, they do not make music! We have the impression that they are not considered as musicians, artists. They’re relegated to the same status as the groom’s suits while still being a necessary part of the ceremony because a cousin of mine’s wedding was almost canceled because the musicians weren’t there.

In other words, they are an essential part of marriage but, at the same time, they are frowned upon. We imagine them to be very rich, possessing a lot of things, whereas I have seen them work in winter as agricultural workers, in greenhouses without any suitable equipment, going back and forth to weed by hand and on their knees. They live in an extremely precarious situation: they do not, for example, have the means to go to the doctor.

There is a certain freedom and a lot of resilience in this trio who resist despite everything…

Najeh and Fatma enjoy inner freedom. For Waffeh, it’s more difficult: her husband is such a bad man, but without any nuance, that we had to remove things during the editing, otherwise it was too much. Their freedom is embodied in the hope that inhabits them. It is in this that they are free, in the sense that they always hope that at some point the situation will improve.

Have you heard from your heroines and have they seen the documentary?

I was with them last week [l’entretien a été réalisé le 25 mai]. I showed them the documentary and it made them laugh a lot. I think they found themselves in it a lot. I had been filming them for five years – since 2017 alone and with a team since 2019 – they hadn’t seen any footage at all and didn’t know what it was going to be like. They had no idea what I was going to keep in the film. Seeing the documentary, Najeh said to me: I forgot all that.

Your documentary starts with a scene where they are at sea. It finally seems soothing in view of what is to follow. What motivated this choice?

We had a hard time placing this bathing scene which was very important to me because it’s a small moment of sweetness in all this difficult whirlwind. In a first cut, she wasn’t there at all. We start slowly. I don’t know if we had the idea of ​​making the film like that, but when I see it, it’s really the idea that as the walls get closer and we are more and more caught in a whirlwind. I have the feeling, as a viewer, that at some point the film grabs us and doesn’t let go until the end.

You are a documentary filmmaker. What attracts you to this format?

The documentary is incredible because I tell myself all the time that if I had wanted to write a story like that, I would never have even dared to talk about matchmakers, who themselves have problems in their relationship. I feel like this story is beyond fiction. I find that reality is so rich, the dialogues are rich. I would never have had enough imagination to write a scene where Najeh calls her boyfriend to tell him that she is going to the doctor where she is going to have her tubes tied. When you find the right team, the right people that you film, with whom you feel good, you have the impression of living another life. In filming, we live with them, we are in this life. I think I’m incredibly lucky to make documentary films.

It’s a genre that is sometimes considered minor when it requires a lot of work…

The format does require a lot of work. The documentary does not enjoy a very good reputation: we quickly imagine films that are a little boring when there are very beautiful things that are being done, magnificent things that are written in documentary.

The sheet

Gender : documentary
Director: Sonia Ben Slama
With Fatma Khayat, Najeh Ghared and Waffeh Ghared
Country : Tunisia, Lebanon, France, Qatar
Duration : 1h22
Exit : Shortly
Summary: AT Mahdia, Tunisia, Fatma and her daughters, Najeh and Waffeh, work as “machtat”, traditional wedding musicians. While the eldest, divorced, tries to remarry to escape the authority of her brothers, the youngest seeks a way to separate from her violent husband.