Q&A with Orian Barki and Meriem Bennani
Known as the masterminds behind the surrealist COVID-19 Instagram series 2 Lizards, Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki combine animation and documentary to humorous, satirical, and tender effects. Bennani is a visual artist who has made films, sculptures, and immersive installations that have been exhibited at The Whitney Biennale, MoMA PS1, and The Guggenheim Museum, among several other prestigious institutions. Barki has directed numerous short documentaries, including films about musicians like Princess Nokia and Rico Nasty. Their feature debut, Bouchra, builds upon their unique blend of animation and documentary to explore the relationship between a queer Moroccan Coyote and her mother.
Bouchra screens at the 63rd New York Film Festival this weekend as part of Currents, a program dedicated to innovative new voices in cinema.
Q. Your work often filters real events and personal stories through animation. What is the appeal of this distancing technique for you two?
A. Meriem: Orian makes documentaries. I come from an animation background, but I started making documentaries and mixing them with animation. I’m more comfortable drawing and making characters versus working with reality directly.
We both have these practices and during the pandemic, we started doing 2 Lizards very intuitively. It was hard to work on real life stuff because everything felt so sad. We wanted to make something together for fun. The characters were animated and the dialogue was just us talking. Our instinct was to use what we do every day and play with reality. It was only afterward that we started to understand what happened when you mix these two mediums — documentary and animation. With Bouchra, we were more aware of what we were doing.
We like working with reality because there’s always something that you can’t write. When you work with reality, the specificity of reality makes everything much more emotional than something that is scripted. At the same time, we don’t believe that reality needs to be treated in a traditional documentary style. We like the potential for abstraction that animation has.
Q. Bouchra operates in a more delicate and subtle key compared to your previous collaborations, which often feature brazen humor and social commentary. What challenges arose in making this tonal shift?
A. Orian: Bouchra was about a more difficult topic that asked for a lot of nuance. Writing the story and thinking about the story, there was a need to think about conflict in a new way. We didn’t want to create a situation where conflict arose from what’s bad and what’s good. That was a challenge when it came to constructing a storyline.
Our way to tackle this was by going into nuance. At first, we thought, “We’re creating a movie with this anti-conflict approach, why are we being avoidant?” But then we realized that we were just being very delicate. Our approach was to look at nuances rather than big crescendoes and explosions.
Q. Music plays a crucial role in Bouchra, as in much of your work to date. What’s your relationship to music when it comes to filmmaking?
A. Meriem: This is a film in which we collaborated with all of the collaborators we have ever worked with. The score was composed by Flavien Berger, who is a French musician. He’s one of my oldest friends. We went to school together in Paris, and every time I’ve made something, he’s scored it.
We also edit rhythmically, intuitively, and with certain moods in mind. What’s amazing about Flavien is that he’s so prolific. He would send us these packs that had like 30 themes based on what he knew about the characters, and so we edited the whole film with that music. But we’d avoid falling into making music video montages by staying aware of the story and its needs.
Orian: Because the movie is so digital, we also wanted to go for a score that was recorded with actual instruments. The score feels warm and it reminded us of Roger Rabbit. It was a little bit old school and cartoony with its suspenseful jazz and horns. It had this atmospheric quality that you don’t necessarily see in animated films.
Q. Where is your favorite place to watch movies?
A. Meriem: We love Regal Essex. Even though they have the worst movies, they have the best seating. There needs to be a Metrograph with Regal’s recliner seats.
Q. What is the last film you saw and loved?
A. Meriem: Youssef Chahine’s Alexandria… Why? He’s an iconic Egyptian filmmaker and it’s crazy that I haven’t watched his movies until now. He also did Cairo Station, which is more famous. He’s been blowing my mind!
Q. What is your “guilty pleasure” movie?
A. Meriem: Is it a guilty pleasure to like Roger Rabbit? I feel like it’s a great movie. Your guilty pleasure is reality TV.
Orian: Yeah.
Q. Who, or what, do you think is the future of filmmaking?
A. Meriem: Filmmaking from people who are trying to propose a new voice. I’m thinking about a lot of filmmakers who are not from places where the industry is strong. When you see French films at Cannes, there is a very similar sense of taste, and when you see films that come out of Hollywood, there is also a very similar taste. Whenever you see a film that has a different syntax, it’s exciting.
There’s also a big movement around artists who are interested in making cinema, and I think artists can come up with a different approach.
Q. What image would you like to end this interview with?
