Where did the inspiration for the film come from?

When you are making a film, you expect to be transformed, to discover things, you want to “travel” on many levels. I lived in the south of Morocco where Saïd Aagli (the character with the green turban in Mimosas) lived. For me, during those years, Saïd was a kind of Dersu Uzala. We travelled quite a lot together.

Your film deals more with faith than religion…

I belong to a generation that has no complexes about religious matters, we make a clear distinction between religion and religious institutions so, we do not have this need to differentiate between faith, religion and spirituality. And this also applies to artistic creation, which is a different kind of religious act. Whether directly or indirectly, the most important filmmakers of all times have made religious films, and I find it strange that today it is not so easy to make these films. We are living in complicated times where everybody avoids talking about tradition, even though avant-garde always did it. There is a lot of scepticism. To face this uncertainty I tried to venture into the essential, whether in the script or in the construction of the images. By doing so Mimosas became an open film that can speak to audiences from different cultures and ideologies. I think it is a positively non-territorialized film. That is why I say that Mimosas is a religious western – knowing that the etymological meaning of the word religion is “to rely”. It is a film of physical and metaphysical adventures. The caravan physically travels across the mountains, but the journey is an inner one as well.

What was your intention using those old taxis crossing the desert?

It is a very archetypal image, so talking about the intentions behind them would deny the power of images and cinema. An aphorism from Cioran accompanied me throughout the creation of Mimosas: “Between the demand to be clear, and the temptation to be obscure, impossible to decide which deserves more respect”. Of course we have the responsibility to be clear with the public but sometimes that responsibility must be taken through some obscurity and unconventionality that might amaze and move the spectator. I think the main question most filmmakers ask themselves, whether consciously or unconsciously, is “How to manifest the ineffable in cinema?” I believe that this can happen in, among others, the form of paradox. In the spiritual geometry of the images of the taxis in Mimosas lies the paradox I aimed for, where this faith is transmitted. I hope those images are an echo of something strange and distant.

Your film is primarily a tale, an epic story where your characters feel the faith and speak directly about it.

That is true. Shakib does it a lot. His condition as an “idiot” legitimates him in the eyes of the sceptics. “You must have faith”, he tells Ahmed when the caravan crosses the gorges of the Atlas mountains looking for a passageway. “If mules can’t make it through the path, then they will fly…”, he adds. For Shakib there is always a solution, even if mad or miraculous. The positive acceptance of problems is a form of faith. But even though his words speak about faith, it is rather his determination, his grace and innocence that transmit an idea, or a feeling of what faith is. The divine is manifested in the form of paradox, but it is mostly through love.