Premiering as a Particular Screening at Cannes was a documentary co-directed by Houda Benyamina, Anne Cissé and topic Melanie Diam’s, the former French rapper and music sensation who stepped away from public life in the early 2010s after changing to Islam. “Salam,” that means “peace” in Arabic, follows Diam’s new life as a philanthropist and mom, removed from the chaos and fame of her previous profession.
Her new spiritual path in life was met with huge shock and criticism from the French media at the time, and pushed Diam’s additional towards the realization that she wanted to desert her music for good.
Benyamina was reluctant to share the route of the movie at first as a result of of a must “have my very own initiatives and my very own voice,” she says.
“However when Melanie requested me to direct her film on my own, I informed her no. It’s her story and he or she must re-appropriate her personal story. It was crucial for me to assist her as a result of I really feel a way of solidarity towards her as an artist and what they did to her in France was very violent. So to offer her my instruments to assist her re-appropriate her story in her personal voice was a political act for me.”
Houda Benyamina
Credit score: John Phillips
The movie takes a agency stance in favoring the current over the previous. No footage of Diam’s efficiency profession seems in the movie and the solely insights into her troubled historical past with despair and psychological well being points come by way of private testimony. “The previous doesn’t exist,” says Benyamina. “As we speak is the current and Melanie needs to dwell in the current second. She didn’t wish to say why she stop rap music however to focus on how, in the present day, she cares solely about providing a message of peace. This actually is Melanie’s movie and displays what she needed to speak about.”
All through the movie, visitor audio system seem as speaking heads with solely the entrance of their faces seen in opposition to a black background. It’s a stylistic approach that creates the look of the audio system sporting the identical spiritual veil as Diam’s, giving the veil a shared, and subsequently impartial, position in the documentary. “The selection with the visitors was to virtually neglect the veil and to solely be linked by their soul and spirit,” Benyamina explains. “In France, if you see somebody with a veil, folks neglect that it’s a human being and so they don’t see an individual’s depth.”
The necessity to re-address perceptions of the veil, particularly in France the place at the moment laws forbids younger Muslim ladies from sporting the garment, drives “Salam” ahead and offers the work a robust political message.
Regardless of fearing COVID-related delays to their journey plans for the movie, which sees Diam’s go to Mauritius and Mali, Benyamina says that “in the finish, the stars aligned. It was like Melanie’s aura, her power, made all of it occur.”
The filmmaker can also be grateful for the help of producer Éric Hannezo who, she says, “trusted Melanie’s voice completely” and gave her and Cissé the freedom to take the mission the place they needed.
Waiting for the movie’s reception in France, Benyamina is happy for audiences to reconnect with Diam’s in a brand new means. “I’m very excited as a result of folks nonetheless love Melanie and so they wish to know what occurred,” she says.
“I feel folks miss her and wish to see her once more.” After the tumult of her youthful life and profession, “it’s so vital for folks to see Melanie as simply regular,” Benyamina provides.
“She needs to dwell her life together with her kids and her faith. It’s in the end simply love and peace.”
