J Paul Johnson
In the short film Saint Rose, a discontented Muslim housewife is seen in the midst of preparations for her daughter’s engagement ceremony. What should be a joyous celebration of love and family seems crushed by the weight of expectation, with Rose’s anxieties driving her to drink. Her confidante, Becky, her Kenyan live-in housekeeper, consoles her and keeps her secret stock of vodka supplied behind the bathroom sink—where the two find brief moments of retreat from their duties and the imposing offscreen voice of the family’s demanding patriarch. As the ceremony approaches, Rose’s anxieties heighten, illustrating the tensions inherent in a hegemonical culture, and threatening to reach a breaking point.
The architect of the film is Zayn Alexandre, a Lebanese American film director, writer, and actor based in New York City. His short films Abroad and Manara debuted at the Oscar-qualifying Santa Barbara International Film Festival and the 76th Venice Film Festival, respectively. Alexandre is, additionally, an alumnus of the prestigious TIFF Filmmaker Lab. As he prepared to see Saint Rose make its world premiere, he spoke with Film Obsessive’s J Paul Johnson about his film’s inspiration and production. The transcript below the video has been edited for space and clarity.
Film Obsessive: Zayn, I’m very pleased to have you here with us today.
Zayn Alexandre: Thank you, Paul. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
I’m eager to talk about your film. Can you tell our audience a little bit about the basic situation and characters in Saint Rose?
Sure. Saint Rose is a short film, like you said. It is a Lebanese short film that I shot back in the summer of last year in Lebanon. And it’s sort of a character portrait of a housewife who is coping with the confinement of her marriage and the expectations within a conservative society and how she navigates those struggles. I can’t say too much without revealing too much, but it’s a subtle film, inspired by my life growing up in Southern Lebanon.
I was born and raised in Lebanon, moved to the United States at 21. So I had 20 years of observations and sort of memories that that just [left me] finally ready to tell a story about some of the things that I experienced growing up in a female dominated household, and Saint Rose is one of many stories to come, I hope, so.
I’m eager to hear a little bit more about your origins and what the seed was for Saint Rose in particular in telling this woman’s story on screen.
Sure. It’s tricky to talk about this because, part of it is personal, part of it is like critique on society and given what’s happening around the world, you don’t want to be you don’t want to sound too negative, but there is a bit, I think that critique of society where you up where you grew up, I think is partly based off of frustration and love at the same time with a place and culture that you want to see treat people with justice. And I think what drives me a lot of the time is what makes me angry is injustice. And when I see people around me being treated unfairly, I just I don’t know, I feel something within. And now I have the privilege of making films and telling stories and writing about them.
I grew up in a female-dominated household. I grew up seeing my mom and my sister and my aunt and my dad’s side of the family is predominantly women. So I see the difference in treatment and roles and role assignment and what is expected of people and how one particular gender, if I may say, has way more freedom in terms of behavior and what they want, how they express their desires and their movements, and another doesn’t. You know, I grew up seeing my mother going out and there’s always what time am I going to be back? Oh, you’re two minutes late. And I would see I would see her face, I would see the tension. I would feel everything that everybody was feeling. And I just sort of never quite understood. And I think till this very day, there’s some pockets in the world where that still exists.
But the film itself—stop me if I speak too much because I’m trying to relate it to the film—the film itself came from one vivid memory. During my sister’s engagement, my mother was squeezing oranges, making orange juice for hundreds of people, and I just didn’t understand why we weren’t buying freshly made orange juice from the store because that was the expectation um, set by the patriarch in the family and my dad. And all of a sudden, sort of seeing him morph into a host, and she’s the assistant.
Meanwhile, it’s her turf, and she’s hosting, and she’s supposed to be celebrating her daughter, and my sister. But it was interesting how he just sort of wanted to be the star of the evening and my mother sort of slid into the background after she did all the work and there was an expectation of what kind of manual labor that needed to be done. And that stayed with me. That particular image stayed with me, and that was the genesis of Saint Rose and that particular scene with the orange juice and kind of was the foundation of the entire film.
There’s really two central characters in Saint Rose. One of those is the matriarch who you speak of and whom I’m assuming here is modeled to a degree after your mother. And I’m just wondering if making a film in which a stand-in character for your own mother is the protagonist of the film, if that’s something that you need then to negotiate and discuss and work through with your own family?
Well, here’s the thing. The actress (Ghada Basma) is my mother. Yes. So that is a negotiation. [Laughs]
That is a negotiation!
Of course, it’s difficult because you’re tapping into deeply personal issues. But I think for me, I you know, the decision, I like to work with family. I know I like to work with people there’s incredible familiarity with because I know what I can bring from them on camera. And so she was okay. She was game. And I said, this is what we’re trying to do, and I don’t want you to be too self conscious about it, and I don’t want you to think about who’s going to see this and who’s not going to see this. And she was game, and she’s incredibly supportive, and this was an important story. But this is not something that she just experienced or still experiences. I mean, the film is dedicated to a dear friend of hers and our family who went through similar situations, and it felt there was a responsibility to tell the story to honor her spirit.
There wasn’t much of a negotiation with my dad. I was like, we’re shooting a film, deal with it. You know, you’re in it. You’re inferred. it was difficult tapping into those personal sort of emotions and the genesis of it all. And Sharon (Chepkwemoi Watoka), who plays Becky in the film was also incredibly empathetic and she had incredible access to the character. And I sat them down. I said, this is the story, and I did a little bit of rehearsals, but I could immediately see the intuitive choices of choices that they’re making, and I felt like rehearsing too much would be counterproductive.
Did you go through anything equivalent to a traditional casting process there? Or did you have these two women in mind right from the start, and they are going to be playing the characters?
There was no traditional casting process. [It was more like] I have this idea. I’d like you to be part of it. Let’s see what we can do. We’ll rehearse a little bit. I see if I can get what I need and what feels right. And if I do, I’ll just take the risk on the day, and we just all pressures off, and it’s just focusing in the moment. And working with non-actors is challenging, but also it’s liberating in a way because they’re not necessarily worried about their marks, and they’re not and it’s what comes intuitively to them that is also equally powerful.
I’m just very curious to know who some of your favorite filmmakers are. Are there other directors, filmmakers who you see mining similar territory or whose working methods or maybe treatments you admire?
Oh, God, this question. It’s a very long list. And for me I mean, I love the work of [Pedro] Almodovar and [Asghar] Farhadi and the Coen Brothers. I love the Dardennes. There’s so many there’s so many filmmakers. There’s so many films. I mean, I’m not necessarily drawn to a particular style as much as I’m drawn to a story or an actor’s commitment in a story. There’s so many, it’s a very long list. But I if you’ve seen my previous films there’s a constant theme. There’s always one location. There’s always very minimal characters. And for me, that’s that’s That’s not necessarily dictated by the structure, which is, we’re working in a short film format, we’re working with a limited budget and minimal resources. I enjoy telling a story in a confined setting. For me, it’s freeing to use the space and seeing what kind of how the story particularly unfolds within that space. I’m drawn to that. I’m really drawn to the human condition, what’s not said, what is inferred, and Saint Rose is I think is a bit subtle as well in that sense, because it’s It’s about the behavior. It’s about what is not being said. It’s about there’s the emotion behind again, what’s not being said.
I was thinking a little bit in terms of maybe Douglas Sirk or following him, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, also filmmakers who really love that notion of the enclosed, constricted, almost kind of claustrophobic space at times, and you know, the mise-en-scène still being very rich and very informative. I was also going to comment on the beautiful set that you have and the way it was lit and shot, so beautifully, and aesthetically, clearly, very intentionally, as well. Could you talk a little bit about first the set where you shot Saint Rose, and then also what you needed to do to make the set look like it looks almost as another character on screen.
Thank you. I appreciate that. Oh, we’re working with amazing people like our DP Karim Kassem, who is really just incredibly talented and brought a very nuanced touch to the story. And Yasmina Zeidan, who is our incredible art director. You know, with Lebanese Cinema, there’s a class divide in Lebanon that is very nuanced. There’s the majority of the population is a middle class family or middle class families who it’s I believe they can be categorized as discreetly wealthy, which is there’s a very polished veneer, but It’s not really it doesn’t necessarily symbolize grandness or wealth. It’s just it’s a veneer, where yes, it looks grand, but the walls are cracked. The walls are cracked, the paint is cracked. There’s great taste, but there’s a foundation that’s fractured when it comes to the foundation and the infrastructure.
And so this is what I really wanted to highlight. And also, I think it’s about Rose’s relationship to her setting, her bathroom and her relationship to that. It was important to highlight as well, and why that is considered sort of a getaway place for her, and also how that home, even though it’s her turf, and it’s where she feels like she can be herself, it’s also a prison. And the kitchen scene and the bathroom scene, the windows are small. There’s bars on the windows. And I think it’s we worked together with a great team to sort of amplify those elements in a way.
It is a small bathroom! I’m also just curious about what it takes to get your crew in there as the cast and conduct the shoot. That to me, sounds like it must have been complicated, as well.
Yeah. We were in the bathtub, sort of all of us sort of crammed in the tub, and it was one of the joys of filming is to really just kind of get the shot and and the magic of cinema really and cheat, technically speaking. It was definitely confined spaces, but you make it work when you work with great people, and you forget that technical component. You just really focus on what’s in front of you.
So this is a proof of concept film. You’re looking at this story for elaborating at some point in the future. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah. You know, I’ve been developing my feature for quite a while now and it’s in the late development stages. And Saint Rose is a little microcosm of that feature. It’s a story of one particular character that I chose to focus on that also has very similar characteristics and a very similar arc in the feature. And And yeah. So I’m excited to sort of bring that to life very soon, I hope. And it’s a very special project, and I was very, very happy to have have this script be selected at the TIFF Filmmmaker Lab a couple of years ago, and then it won Best Pitch at the Reykjavík International Film Festival. I’ve been really very proud of the journey so far and hope to bring it to life soon.
That is exciting. I hope we get to have another conversation about that film sometime in the future. So in the meantime Saint Rose debuts at the Red Sea International Film Festival next month, is that correct?
December. Yeah, December 9 is the world premiere of Saint Rose at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia. And yeah, I’m excited to share it. Also, a little anxious to see what people to see what people think. And it’s always it’s always nerve-wracking to share work because it’s a very vulnerable place to be. But I’m I’m not in it. I acted in my previous film. So this is the first film I didn’t have an acting role in, so I don’t get to see myself up there, which is nice. I get to just kind of enjoy the experience with everybody else.
I’m pretty confident it’s going to be a treat for the audience there. And then what’s next for you? Continued work on the feature film? Do you have other projects?
The feature is my main focus right now, touring with the short and then making the feature.
Zayn, thank you for taking the time to talk with us at Film Obsessive today.
Thank you, Paul. I appreciate this. Thank you so much. It was a great conversation.
