Meeting in the Desert of Nacer Khemir

By: Jude Chehab 

I met Nacer Khemir in a café outside his screening room in Istanbul. I had flown from Lebanon to Turkey, when I heard he’d be giving a masterclass, in hopes of finally meeting the man that confirmed to me that a spiritual cinema could exist. Approximately ten minutes before the masterclass, I had the chance to sit with him. 

You see, this wasn’t our first meeting, I had met him years prior, in his films, through his films, thinking about his films. I was a young filmmaker when I watched Bab’ Aziz (2005), I was in awe of the portrayal of a tender Islam in cinema, of a man who made films his whole life with this mission in mind and yet was celebrated by few.

Back in Istanbul, he sat there quietly, barely looking up, doodling on an empty paper coffee cup. It was hard to communicate, my Lebanese-American tongue and his Tunisian-French tongue struggled. But I got the main points across. I was struggling in this industry, I had just finished my first feature, which I put my heart and soul into, longing for a tender Islam, for an audience to see it and feel it. And yet I was receiving rejections from the biggest festivals in Europe and America. “The problem isn’t them, it’s you,” he said. My longing for their approval was my fault. He said “We are orphans in the film industry. Europe doesn’t understand my films. We are in an era where everything is realistic and yet we are trying to make something metaphysical.” 

He said that Tunisians say he sold himself to the West, that he is always crying for his past, “I tell them, I am not crying for your past, I am crying for your future.” 

He never made money from cinema, quite the opposite, he lost more than he gained, “actually, cinema didn’t bring me anything. But it taught me to not obey a cultural dictatorship and tyranny. I always work to portray what I think, it isn’t about being accepted, it’s a matter of conscience. At the end of the day, your religion is yours, and my religion is mine.” 

109:6

لَكُمْ دِينُكُمْ وَلِىَ دِينِ 

“Do what you want, but don’t obey money, power, tyranny, anything.” I understood then, my place in this industry, that feels bleak at times. Maybe only a few understand our films, maybe only God, maybe that’s the goal after all, to communicate through these images to the One who knows best and Him alone.

Jude Chehab is a Lebanese-American filmmaker whose cinematic interests have drawn Jude to the exploration of the esoteric, the spiritual, and the unspoken. A richly layered visual and intimate personal shooting style developed under the mentorship of Abbas Kiarostami's final student group. Jude has worked as a DP internationally, on films in Somalia, Sudan, and Pakistan, and has been credited with collaborations with the BBC, Hot Docs, and Sesame Street. Her work has been awarded fellowships through CAAM, BGDM, NeXtDoc, Points North Institute, Firelight Media, Close-Up, and Chicken & Egg. Jude's first feature documentary has been supported by: IDA, ITVS, TFI, and Sundance and went on to win the Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Director at Tribeca 2023. In 2021, Filmmaker Magazine named her one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film.