'We are different; we must talk about that. For me, my identity is not a handicap, it’s my heritage': French-Lebanese filmmaker Chloé Mazlo

French-Lebanese director Chloé Mazlo (right) with a still of her debut feature film, Skies of Lebanon/Sous le ciel d'Alice, 2020. (Images courtesy Institut Français, India)

Paris-based Chloé Mazlo, 39, would be quite amused by the stories of Lebanon her grandmother used to narrate. That children could find fantasy even in grim tales of war is a realisation she'd have only in adulthood. Only when she stepped into her 20th year, did questions of her identity began to gnaw at her.

After studying graphic design at the Arts Décoratifs school in Strasbourg, the French-Lebanese filmmaker specialised in animated-film direction, and all her short films are animations. One of which won her the César Awards (the French equivalent of the Oscars!) in 2015, Les Petits cailloux (Best Animated Short Film).

Sous le ciel d'Alice/Skies of Lebanon, starring Alba Rohrwacher and Wajdi Mouawad, is her first feature, which she made in 2020, but a pandemic-gripped world put a stop on the film's movement in the festival circuit. While the next year she was invited to the Cannes Film Festival, her film wasn't eligible to qualify since it was made the previous year. It's been three years since but she's not giving up, she is going from one country to another to screen the film, a story inspired from her grandmother's life, and gauge the audience reactions.

Her grandparents had to flee Lebanon during the civil war (1975-90) and build a modest life in France. There's romance, wonderment, a quest for one's home and roots — one you only hear of in stories and memories family relay to children — and exploration of the idea of  home and belonging, in a place and in another person.

If Alice returns to explore Lebanon, Joseph wants to go to space. The film blends live action and animation, and will be screened tomorrow, January 23, at 7 pm at Stein Auditorium, as part of the ongoing French Film Festival at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. Entry is free, on first-come, first-served basis. The screening will be followed by a question-answer session with director Mazlo.

Edited excerpts from a conversation:

What is your story?

I was born in Paris and my parents are Lebanese, so I never know war. All my family are Lebanese. I grew up with a lot of stories about war and Lebanon, and for me, it’s like a fairy tale, it’s strange because those were stories about war. But for me they were amazing and, in this movie, I wanted to share those memories, eccentric and sometimes funny. My grandma knows the best period in Lebanon, because during the 1950s-’70s was a golden age in Beirut, there was a lot of culture, money, tourism. It was like a paradise, and then came the war.

My parents escaped after one year of the war, and my grandfather after 10 years, he didn’t want to leave at first but the war took a toll on him and he was really tired. My grandmother came with him, she is Swiss. She went to Lebanon to be a nurse in the 1950s, and she fell in love with my grandfather in Lebanon. In the ’50s, it was very chic to say, perhaps, ‘I’ve got a nurse from Switzerland’.

At home you’d speak in Lebanese?

No, my parents, between us, we speak Lebanese, but my brother and I, no, we speak in French.

When did you visit Lebanon for the first time? What was the experience?

I went to Lebanon when I was of eight years, that was after the civil war, in the 1990s, and now I go every year. It was like meeting characters of a book because we grew up with these stories and then we met this grandfather and that uncle and those cousins. Every person spoke like my father, in the same accent. It felt like being in a big family.

If you get a chance, would you like to go live in Lebanon?

No, now it is complicated. Now there is an economic crisis, and it’s very difficult to build something. I have all my friends and family in Paris, I also have friends in Lebanon, but I feel really lucky to have grown up in France.

In France, did you feel like an outsider?

Yes, because we don’t have extended family in France so it felt little bit strange during Christmas, we felt ‘oh, we are different’. My father and mother have got different mentality, they are optimists and would say ‘everything is okay’ while the French are not like that.

But nobody treated us differently. I have a French nickname.

How do you define home, identity and belongingness?

I read a book by this Lebanese-French writer Amin Maalouf, in his book Les Identités meurtrières (In the Name of Identity, 1998), in it he writes about identity a lot, because every Lebanese person has many identity, and he says, identity is something which is always on the move. If you go to a place for a period of time, you’ll become a little bit of that place. I think it’s a good vision about identity, because it isn’t boxed.

When I was 20, I went to Lebanon in train, I took the same route my parents took when they left Lebanon by car. I had those questions about where do I belong, what my identity is, am I mixed?

As one grows older, is it important to assert one’s identity?

Yes, it is obviously important because we are different and it’s important to talk about that. For me, it’s not a handicap but it’s my heritage.

Skies of Lebanon is your grandmother’s story? Is it a fictional biography of her life and experiences?

Alice is my grandmother and the other characters are inspired by other people in my family. A lot of scenes are inspired from real life. My grandfather and grandmother had met in a café, like in the film. I have a cousin who went to the militia and my aunt to keep him safe took a gun, when you see the movie you might feel it’s a bit exaggerated but it’s true. I have read some correspondence between my mother and grandmother, I took some sentences and put in the film, such as confrontations between Alice and her daughter.

Does the film follow the Alice in Wonderland trope?  

Aah (laughs). My grandmother’s name is Alice. The (Lebanese) space project is a real project, not with my grandfather, but it was a project about a rocket during the ’60s (in 1963, a Cedar IV rocket was launched and reached 90 miles or 140 km altitude, putting it close to the altitude of satellites in Low Earth Orbit. The rocket was later commemorated on a stamp. The final launch by the Lebanon Rocket Society was in 1966).

The world is increasingly becoming insular, war-minded, with a rise in hatred and fundamentalism, and the space for love is shrinking. Your film propounds love in the time of war.

In Lebanon it was civil war, so, for me it was like you are in your family. One day you are on good terms with each other, and on another day, you fight. It’s like any other couple. I wanted to show a couple, Joseph who’s angry because his space project went kaput and he doesn’t communicate that with Alice. The lack of communication. I think you can escape a fight with the right communication.

The experiences Alice has in the film, did you share those when you went to Lebanon, too?

Oh, yeah, I had similar experience and it’s the same for a lot of people of Lebanon living outside. I met a lot of people, who said, ‘I had the same feeling when I arrived in Lebanon’.

How did you arrive at the creative decision of blending animation with live action?

I made all my short films in animation, so I love the form. For me, it’s playing with it. We only used animation, special effects for the space, astronomy segments. We made the animation in Switzerland.

The film is multilingual, why not stick to one language?

Because in Lebanon you speak French and Lebanese — its Arabic but with a certain accent, a twang, which I like very much. There’s a little Italian too, in two sentences.

Has the representation of women and ethnic minorities changed in French cinema? Is there pay parity and fewer instances of casual sexism in the industry?

Yes, it has become better, the access to cinema is better, more democratic in France. For women, there are new rules in the film industry, if you employ more women than men, or 50-50 per cent representation, then you get more money for your project. It’s not mandatory but you can choose. More women directors, over the years, mean, naturally, they employ a lot of women technicians and write more female characters with agency.

Officially, the payment is the same for directors, but for actors, there are a lot of difference sometimes. More important projects are reserved for men. Expensive, big budget films are for men.

Have you watched any Indian cinema?

Yeah, only a big few. I have seen The Lunchbox (2013) and Monsoon Wedding (2001). I liked the colours and the stories, because it’s romantic.

As a war continues in one corner of Europe, and France signed a deal with the UK with regard to monitoring refugees from crossing the Channel, implying greater surveillance of the refugees, and as you’d know France is the second-largest supplier of arms to India, so, how do you, as a resident there, see the French society changing, and how is that change reflected in French cinema?    

It’s a good question. I think making of every movie is a political act. A comedy romantic film for me is political because a movie is a popular tool to convey your message. In France, it’s different, because we have got money for cinema, we can try a lot of things, maybe in other countries, it’s more a necessity, say, in Ukraine, it’s more vital (to use cinema as a political-messaging tool).

What are you working on next?

Right now on a short film, and then another feature, this time on the relationship of a brother and sister, again inspired by my own life.