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 "Farewell to the Night", which premiered on Tuesday at the
Berlin Film Festival, tells the story of Muriel, played by
Deneuve, and her attempt to stop her grandson from joining
Islamic State in Syria.
"The character in the film is certainly an intelligent woman,
but she is also very tolerant, she is somebody who doesn't
judge, who tries to understand," Deneuve told a news conference.
Muriel's quiet life on a horse-breeding farm in rural France is
interrupted by a visit from her grandson Alex whom she raised
after his mother's death in an accident.
He has stopped by the farm to say goodbye to her before
supposedly leaving to take up a job in Canada. During his short
stay, Muriel finds out that her grandson has been converted to
Islam through his girlfriend Lila.
Muriel, herself born in Algeria, accepts her grandson's new
religion and tries to understand him. But she later learns that
Alex plans to leave for Syria to join Islamic State and she
becomes torn between trying to dissuade him from going and
having the authorities intervene.
CROSSING TO THE OTHER SIDE
"The whole point of the film for me was about how this down-
to-earth woman... how all of a sudden, she can find her way to
help her grandson when she realizes that he's crossed over to
the other side," director Andre Techine said.
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Techine said he wanted the audience to ask themselves what they
would do if they found themselves in that situation.
Muriel turns for help to an ex-jihadist who returned to France after
trying to live in Syria for a while.
The film portrays Alex as having little understanding of Islam or of
the political situation in Syria. The internet is his primary source
of information about his religion and, for him and Lila, life after
death is the only one worth living.
Much of the characters' dialogue in the film is drawn from
interviews with de-radicalized jihadists, Techine said.
"These are actually their own words ... I wanted those words to be
heard by the audience," he said.
Out of more than 5,000 Europeans - mostly from Britain, France,
Germany and Belgium - known to have joined the ranks of Islamist
fighters in Syria and Iraq, some 1,500 have returned, Europe's
police agency said last year.
(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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