Mauro Herce, AEC, explains his choices for the filming of "Sirat", by Oliver Laxe

After Luis’s daughter, Marina, disappeared without a trace at a rave party in Morocco several months ago, he sets out to find her. He is accompanied by his twelve-year-old son, Esteban. At the rave, no one claims to have seen or known the girl. When the Moroccan police shut down the event, all foreigners must be expelled. Luis and Esteban flee with several other partygoers. The group then crosses the Atlas Mountains in a battered coach. Their destination is another illegal rave on the southern border of Morocco. Luis and Esteban hope to find Marina there.

A truck escape in the desert, drug addicts partying, a kind of final fireworks display... this film is a bit of a cross between Zabriskie Point and Mad Max, isn’t it ?

Mauro Herce : With Oliver Laxe, I can’t say that we’ve really made action films before ! And I think that with Sirat, we really wanted to make one. So, maybe not a pure Hollywood film, but something inspired by it through the context, the themes and, of course, the scenography... and which might also reach more people than the previous ones !
As we’re both big film buffs, we watched a lot of things that could inspire us while we were preparing. The "Mad Max" series, naturally. Even if the first one wasn’t actually shot in the desert, Therefore its simplicity and independant cinema feel is probably the closest to our film,... I could also mention Henri Georges Clouzot’s Le Salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear) and its famous doomed remake by William Friedkin (Sorcerer). It was of course an opportunity to observe how these films dealt with the feeling of travel and adventure, and how the directors used the raw material of the road movie.
It’s funny that you mention Antonioni and Zabriskie Point, because even though I’m a big fan of his, I have to admit that it’s probably my least favourite film of his. So I can’t say I consciously thought about it... but now that you mention it, there are quite a few similarities with Sirat ! Our challenge was to see how far we could mix the themes of action films while retaining the slowness and André Bazin-esque aspect of cinema where things develop within the shot. And where we know that the feat really took place in front of the camera, without any kind of post manipulation.

How did you choose your locations ?

MH : For production reasons, the film was shot mainly in Morocco, but also 30% in Spain. Except that the locations we found in Spain didn’t have the same power as those in the Moroccan desert. The green of the vegetation often appeared at the turn of a simple pan, and the feeling of being lost in the desert could very quickly be broken in the image. So we had to do a lot of research to be able to mix certain locations throughout the film and integrate them into our characters journey. I remember that we started by drawing a kind of progression of the film on a large sheet of paper based on the landscapes, with the mountain profile following the plain, the river crossing, etc. Each scene in this landscape was illustrated by a location photo that we added as we went along. This stage helped us a lot to gather all the possible locations and come up with several combinations in terms of production and narrative so that the film would remain plausible. In the end, a lot of things changed, particularly in terms of sets that fell through and the unexpected things you encounter on every project. The biggest challenge, I think, was not to give the viewer the impression of any kind of way back. The editing also changed some of the rules we had set for ourselves during filming, but I feel that overall we really succeeded in this challenge of a perpetual journey into the unknown.

How do you approach a road movie like this on film ?

MH : I come from a documentary background, and working in a small team with a great ability to adapt has always been part of my daily life. On a project like Sirat, things are certainly much more complicated, but we tried to remain as flexible as possible. So, depending on the weather, or a surprise in terms of a location or an event, we could improvise a scene or bring back shots that weren’t planned. For example, the sandstorm sequence came together in the space of a few hours, taking advantage of a real storm and abandoning the initial shooting schedule to film it. Another example is the shots of trucks driving through the night, which were filmed spontaneously at the end of the day on the way back to the hotel, again without any preparation or real anticipation.

The film opens with a long rave scene. There is indeed a very documentary feel to the beginning of the film...

MH : It was one of the most challenging scenes. The idea was to get in touch with real organisers of this kind of event and set one up specially for the purpose of the film. We crossed our fingers that we’d get as many participants as possible on the day and exploit the situation in an almost documentary style. This sequence is part of what was shot in Spain for the film. Once we found the location, we had to juggle the very complicated legal aspects of filming with the much less legal context in which this kind of gathering is organised. First, we had to convince our contacts in the rave scene, which isn’t necessarily easy when you know how distrustful this community can be, especially towards a film crew. But after spending a lot of time with them, Oliver managed to convince them to organise the event and let us film it, while obtaining all the necessary authorisations from the local authorities by exploiting the fact that the legality of the event was, after all, very theoretical ! I mentioned earlier the last-minute changes we had to make throughout the film, and of course a lot had to be cut from this sequence, for example because of a ban on lighting fires that was imposed a few days before shooting. A whole section of the long opening scene was supposed to take place at night around a wooden totem pole burning on a pyre in the middle of the dance floor. These were all little narrative threads that allowed us to energise the scene and avoid just showing shots of people dancing and dancing ! This allowed us to discover the group of characters in the film through concrete actions in the preparation and execution of the rave. This is also why the scene had to be shortened in the film, from an initial length of 40 minutes in the script to just over 20 minutes in the final edit. In the end, we had over 1,000 people at the height of the party. So it’s a kind of crowd scene that you can’t really control, with many people staying in their trucks at one point or another... but in the sequence where the military evacuates the party, we really had a lot of people in front of the camera !

Another thing about Sirat is its timeless quality.

MH : I like to create a cinematic space where no one can say categorically whether we’re in the natural or the artificial... and on Sirat, we really didn’t want to place the images in a specific time frame. The trucks, for example, are quite retro, and the few bits of narrative information that the characters receive from outside are very fragmentary. There’s talk of war, but is it just a local civil war or a global conflict... we don’t know. Our work is part of a cinema that suggests more than it shows, that’s for sure ! Suggesting things in cinema leaves a lot more room for the viewer’s imagination. And I think a good film is one that manages to interest us without ever really saying exactly what it’s about... one that forces us to participate. But I realise that this remark doesn’t just apply to cinema, it’s true of all art forms !

A cinema that suggests... is it because you chose to shoot on film ?

MH : First of all, Sirat was filmed 80% outdoors in the middle of summer, under the blazing sun. Probably a nightmare for any self-respecting director of photography ! It was a real challenge in terms of the images, and Olivier and I felt it was absolutely necessary to use film to help us in these conditions. Since we didn’t have the budget for a big action film production, we could not to block the sunlight and re-light with our own sources for continuity. So it was initially a very prosaic, very practical choice to shoot on film. But I must also admit that I really like the surprise of the latent image, that kind of uncertainty we were talking about. And with the concrete power of digital, its immediate reality and truthness is very far from making the film in your head before seeing it appear on the screen. And even though I’ve already made about 15 features on film, I still don’t know exactly what’s going to happen at the end. You go to sleep every night with the film in your head, and that forces you to work your imagination harder...

And the 2.39 format ?

MH : This initial desire for an adventure film immediately made us think of anamorphic. So we decided we were going to shoot this kind of action film in 35 Scope ! To show the desert, all its nuances of colour, lose the protagonists in the landscape, and take advantage of this desert setting that goes so well with 2.39. Little by little, as discussions with the production team got underway, we had to rethink our plans and abandon the extra cost of scope lenses and the potential footage in 35mm 4P to switch to spherical in 2P... and in the end, the film was shot in 16mm to stay within budget. So we shot in Super 16 spherical with Arri Ultra Prime, the only real set available in this configuration. And for the few night sequences, we still had to use digital with an Alexa 35 to be able to shoot in very low light.

Isn’t it too difficult in terms of definition to see your film from such a small negative projected on such a large screen ?

MH : As I am taking care of colour grading the films I shot, I tooke great care with the final touches, degraining some scenes and sharpening the wide shots. I was really satisfied after checking the DCP in Barcelona, where the projection was very clean, and actually I didn’t expect to find the same thing in Cannes. Having discovered several of my films in parallel sections in the past, without ever being completely satisfied. This time, I must say that I was amazed by the quality of the projection in the large Lumière auditorium, giving the images an even more spectacular presence and precision than I had imagined. Combined with the very large screen size, I was quite pleased to see that many people, even professionals, thought that the film had been shot in 35mm... which was our initial choice. I even think that after this reference screening, I will go back to Resolve to tone down some of the definition enhancement on certain shots or sequences that seemed almost too strong to me during the first screening...

(Interview by François Reumont for the AFC)