By Sanna Hamid, BA History and International Relations
Dina Amer, writer and director of You Resemble Me and former journalist, reported on the ‘first female suicide bomber’ in Paris for Vice News, before it was announced as false information. What she didn’t know yet was that Hasna Ait Boulahcen’s life would become the object of her work for years to come. She spent 6 years obsessing over Hasna’s story and dedicated herself wholly to telling the world the truth. Guilt-ridden at having perpetuated the wrong narrative about Hasna, Amer approached Hasna’s mother, who, until then, had turned down all other media. She spoke to Amer because she resembled Hasna. Amer elaborated in the post screening Q&A that ‘[Hasna’s] core wound, of feeling like she was a walking contradiction and that she didn’t really belong anywhere, is mine’. The result of 360 interview hours and six years of determination, is this story, based on true events and revealing how Hasna ended up where she did: radicalised by ISIS and losing her life at their hands in a Paris apartment.
The film begins by showcasing the sisterly intimacy between Hasna and Maryam, born into a broken Moroccan family living in the Parisian banlieue. It follows a young Hasna as she is split from her sister by social services, and into her years as a young adult navigating life as an Arab Muslim girl in France. As she grows up, Hasna’s story becomes a desperate search for identity. In the film, we see a harrowing morphing of faces when Hasna is forced to face the harsh realities of life, depicted by the use of three actors to play her character. Amer seamlessly reveals the twists and turns of a tumultuous life, revealing that ending of the film, when she’s drawn in by her cousin’s online presence as a Jihadi who was ‘helping people’ in Syria, is just one of the wrong turns she could have gone down that caused her tragic ending. Amer plausibly and sympathetically dissects the dark ending turning it into a story of family, love, sisterhood and belonging. It touches on themes of Islamophobia, poverty, the policing of Muslim women’s bodies, neglect and God.
In reality, the forensic evidence shows that the bomber who detonated the explosives from the attack in 2015 was an unidentifiable man. Hasna was heard screaming, “Please help! Let me jump, I want to leave” as she was trapped in an apartment with her cousin Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was the ‘mastermind’ of the Paris 2015 attacks that killed 137 people in a nightclub and stadium among other locations. It seems a catastrophic case of the wrong time, wrong place and wrong crowd, for Hasna.
However, the representation of Muslims in this film is not limited to them being victims of radicalisation. In a scene where Hasna was harassed at work in a cafe by men she had met previously in a club, there is a built Muslim man in a thobe who steps in to protect her by physically restraining them then simply walking out with his wife and young child. His wife even offers further help to Hasna which she refuses, flustered and embarrassed. This scene is symbolic, similar to a Quranic depiction of Prophet Musa (Moses) helping some girls water their sheep amongst a crowd of hostile men and then simply walking away. Perhaps it was something that really happened to Hasna, either way, the film would have made sense without it, yet it was there. Why is this so important you may ask? In London we take for granted how diverse it is. You probably cannot count on two hands how many different types of people you meet daily. In fact, It’s likely you know someone for each of these Muslim majority ethnicities; Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Palestinian, Somali, Algerian, Moroccan etc.The odds are the majority of the UK population does not. I imagine most of the audience watching in Mayfair might not have either, which is why it’s important that they see a side of Islam and Muslims on screen that is more accurate, and isn’t what the mainstream media spits out every few months.
“The French media was so quick to label Hasna as ‘Europe’s first female suicide bomber’, that not only was the claim wrong but 3 different Moroccan women’s images were used and said to be Hasna. As if it didn’t matter who they actually were, so long as they were Muslim women. Amer’s parting words with the audience of the Q&A were: ‘France needs to do better.’”
The film was the type to leave you pondering over the layers of meanings for days after. So much so that Amelia and I, who went to view the premiere together at Curzon Mayfair and initially planned to write a joint article, decided instead to do two individual pieces so we could dig deeper. Even the title of the film, through clever wordplay, is intrinsically linked with Dina, ‘this film was about a woman who resembled me’ she said which also speaks to the otherness of Muslims by the French state. The film seamlessly incorporated a documentary style ending with real interview snippets and news headlines, demonstrating the reality of the story. The French media was so quick to label Hasna as ‘Europe’s first female suicide bomber’, that not only was the claim wrong but 3 different Moroccan women’s images were used and said to be Hasna. As if it didn’t matter who they actually were, so long as they were Muslim women. Amer’s parting words with the audience of the Q&A were: ‘France needs to do better.’
Dina Amer felt disenchanted by the news model where her sensitivity was buried in the name of objectivity and professionalism. ‘The truth is there is no absolute objectivity, anyway’ she says. The liberation of becoming a filmmaker for her was in allowing vulnerability and sensitivity to be the gold dust of the story. The fact that Hasna’s mother only let Dina in through the door because she resembled her daughter, is a glaringly evident call out for the journalism industry to diversify if it truly cares about telling all stories.
This film is available virtually on Curzon Home Cinema and BFI Player, for more information please visit: You Resemble Me — Modern Films
A longer form article on You Resemble Me will also be released in Issue 24 of the SOAS Spirit, coming soon in March.
Photo Caption: Film Poster for You Resemble Me (Credit: Modern Films)