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Aziz Al-Dilaimi - Talent, A Curse and a Blessing

Amsterdam, 2024-07-12 - Gerlinda Heywegen

                                                                                                                                  picture: Amir Zaza

It’s the end of March, and Aziz Al-Dilaimi is in a café near the red light district, ready for the interview for the NSC website, for which, as he e-mailed in reply to the invitation, he feels very honoured. Coincidentally, filming is going on outside for what would later become apparent is one or other TV series. It’s a fairly big set and before the conversation can begin, Al-Dilaimi is already trying to see how it’s going and if he can see anyone - colleagues - he knows. And he does, of course. He knows the sound engineer quite well and he tells Al-Dilaimi what they’re filming. Round the corner from the cafe, the actors Ciarán Hinds and Lesley Manville are waiting for their next take. It is a gift, a living portrait, says Al-Dilaimi.
Hinds and Manville have to perform a scene on the famous Staalmeestersbrug again and again. It’s very dramatic; at least, that’s how it looks. Now and then a camera on a crane glides past the window where, a little later, the interview takes place. It is the perfect setting for an interview with a circumspect and yet passionate young Dutch DoP, Aziz Al-Dilaimi (1988).

VISUALIZATION
“I think in pictures,” is one of the first things that he says, a seemingly unremarkable statement for a cameraman. However, what Al-Dilaimi means is not quite as obvious as it may first appear. “After reading a script or treatment, I know straightaway how it needs to look long before I start filming. Always. I just have to actually do it. I don’t have to think about how it has to appear, I already know. That sounds fine, but it is also difficult. I still have to explain it, find the words. It’s a step forwards, but also a step backwards. It’s a curse and a blessing. I can find the solution to a problem, but we still have to do it together.”
Why did Al-Dilaimi become a DoP then and not, for example, a director? If the visual language is so clear to him and what he wants to say with it? “I have a lot of energy, I do a lot of sport, so DoP suits me well, how I am now, and that probably won’t be any different in the future. It has to be physical. When I’m moving, I get closer to myself.” But filming is also a lot of waiting, standing still (just as the film shoot outside shows). Al-Dilaimi admits that, but adds: “I observe a lot. A lot happens in my head.”

'Femi' (2022)

That having to talk, to articulate the image, is necessary in order to understand the process of filmmaking. “By expressing it, I understand it better myself. Then I’m reminded that in a conversation, for example, I sometimes don’t say everything, so that there can be a disconnect. By saying it out loud, I’m reminded of how it worked in my head. The person I talk to and who I work with isn’t always there, so I am the one who has to make a start.”
How does that work in practice? When Al-Dilaimi filmed Femi (2022) with the director Dwight Fagbamila, for example? The film that is set in Eindhoven, which also had to make that very clear, is very colourful. But above all, as Al-Dilaimi agrees, at night. In the daytime it seems fairly neutral, just the houses and streets as they are in the plainer neighbourhoods of the ‘city of light’ [named after the match industry there and later, the Philips company, tr.], but when it gets dark, when Dennis/Femi’s thoughts begin to haunt him, it is then that the colours come. Red, green, blue: they follow each other in quick succession. Femi, Fagbamila’s film debut, tells the story of the eponymous 21-year-old, who seems to be carrying the world on his shoulders. It is almost as if he literally is carrying a great, physical burden. His father died when he was young and things are not going well for his mother, and when he has just turned 20, he has to move back in with her. Few are happy to see him again, least of all his ex-girlfriend, who is carrying his unborn child. Femi has a dark feel, but it is also exceptional. Never before has a film been so contemporarily ‘Brabants’ [Noord-Brabant, of which Eindhoven is the biggest city, is a distinctive province of the Netherlands, tr.] with just the right accents, just the right locations in the city and the Philips stadium (of football club PSV, gh), standing out like a temple. The film is almost social realistic, beside the ghostliness of the night when the colours appear. Al-Dilaimi explains that he thought that Eindhoven as city of light was a good metaphor, hence all the coloured lamps. “But,” he says, “it’s more than just that. The light also has to ‘bite’. When Femi walks through the night, the light has to be so intense that it almost hurts. In the daytime, he walks in the shadows, and he also tries to make himself invisible at night by almost diving into all the colours. This ‘almost hurting’ is because of Femi’s vulnerability. He can’t bear it anymore.”
The film could just as easily have been called Bijt [‘bite’ in Dutch, tr.], like the other film on which Al-Dilaimi worked as DoP. This film had its world premiere at this year’s International Filmfestival Rotterdam. Al-Dilaimi agrees. “It’s a similar theme. In Femi and Bijt, it’s about young men full of self-loathing, lacking purpose and disconnected from themselves and their surroundings who finally resort to self-harm. For Femi, the cause is trauma, racism; in Bijt, it is different, but Guido (Coppis, the director) doesn’t want to explain or psychoanalyse it, the character is already so far that the cause is already relegated to the background.”

In contrast with Femi, there is no colour in Bijt, just copper with black and grey. It is also about someone on the fringes, in run-down settings, a mountain of misery and powerlessness. It appealed to Al-Dilaimi a great deal and he regards it now with Femi and White Berry (2022), directed by Sia Hermanides, as a sort of trilogy within his own oeuvre, because in White Berry, according to the DoP, there was also a main character who had not yet learnt to love himself. “The feeling connects the three films, the three characters. It also makes the films difficult to watch sometimes, perhaps less accessible. It demands a lot of your empathy as an audience. Do you know the expression, ‘You choose a book and the book chooses you’? It’s the same with film, at least for me. In my final exam film [for the Netherlands Film Academy where Al-Dilaimi studied, tr.] Nighthaven (Nachtoord, dir. Hetty de Kruijf, 2015), there is a lot of hope, I think, but there’s also that darker world.”
The obvious next question is how the films chose Al-Dilaimi. Or is he the characters? The DoP from the town of Zeeland in the province of Noord-Brabant often makes circular movements when answering a question. “A friend said once, ‘Aziz, your pictures are so dark’, I was a lot younger then, I don’t know, I’ve also had to go through a number of phases. I think that directors felt that I was suitable for some projects.

'Bijt' (2024)

Recently, his gaze has been more open, he quickly adds: “Bijt is more open for me than Femi, and even White Berry, which I thought was very intense. The camera is slightly more distant in Bijt and takes more in. The frame is more open, it’s less compressed, the perspective... The camera is less of a character.”
In all these films, Al-Dilaimi tried to be flexible, subtle, to empathize with the characters. It has to breathe, move. He wants to make it beautiful without judgement. “I go very far with the actor’s performance.” Always? “Yes, I always try to,” he says with conviction. “Sometimes I distance myself so that I can see the situation, but never a great deal. Expressively though! I don’t think that it’s the camera that should be setting the emphasis. The atmosphere, the space, the light, the background the character is being filmed against, that’s it for me. I want to be present without dictating anything, and that’s how I try to convey a feeling. Cinematography is capturing the moment for me, and ideally, I do that with sensory elements.”

CROSSROADS
Al-Dilaimi decides to say more about his preparation, pre-production. Often, before he starts to explain, he says ‘okay’, as if he is taking a sort of run-up before the story comes out. Like this: “Okay, about Femi. Dwight and I allowed the actors, very gently, to perform first. I watch what they are doing while they are rehearsing and then we offer them something.” It is striking that actors in Jungle (dir. Hetty de Kruijf, 2017) Femi and White Berry were nominated a Gouden Kalf [the awards of the Netherlands Film Festival; in other words, the Dutch Oscars, tr.]. Whether that is due to Al-Dilaimi’s approach, he won’t say. More important is the collaboration. He wants to be clear about that. Throughout the entire interview, in fact. It’s not about him, but the collaboration. He does want to say the following about it though: “I think that I can definitely get actors to play to their strengths with the director. We also have to decide things, of course, but the camera doesn’t dictate everything. We just let the actors perform within the frame, with total freedom. It’s only if there’s no other way, then I say, for example, ‘Come and stand in the light’. I show them... No, I let them feel, that it’s a good place. I take them with me. I get them to feel that it’s warmer then, for example. It touches them. So that they can work with it. Then they give something that I can’t anticipate. It’s my natural approach: observation and then converting that into the visual as precisely as possible. You don’t learn that straightaway at the film academy; it’s something that you develop yourself.
Actually, all the actors that I’ve had in front of the camera work so much with their senses, so sensitively, that there’s nothing to it. The way painters look at things, that’s how I have to look at things as well. The smallest details? Every little muscle. They have to open themselves up and I have to as well, on the set. My filter has to go. I have to be able to allow what they are doing for the camera. That makes it very vulnerable.”

He felt his ‘calling’ quite early on in secondary school. It was in culture and arts education [CKV, a compulsory subject at the time in Dutch secondary schools, tr.]. They also had to make a film and that ‘visualization’ happened straightaway. While a lot of classmates just played around, Al-Dilaimi discovered his ability to ‘see pictures’. And even then, he felt fairly socially committed. But, he says, it mustn’t be too obvious. Okay, time for an anecdote. Tomorrow he has a make-up test in his agenda. “I’m taking a young man who is going to help me. On every production, I try to involve someone who could use a little extra support. Younger people who might also want to get into the profession for example. Of course, if the production allows it. Actually, it always has been possible so far. I’m also on the diversity commission of the NSC, but I only wanted to do that if we really could do something. The NSC gives someone a grant every year, someone who needs it. I think it’s important to contribute and I’m happy that there’s the opportunity for that. For me, it’s normal to want to help others, also because I know myself how crucial it can be. I’m grateful for that. I sometimes didn’t realise myself that I also needed help.”

Now that Al-Dilaimi, 36 years old, is already well established, does he want to go abroad, or doesn’t it matter where he works? Al-Dilaimi: “I think that I am sort of at a crossroads. The films that I have made have been fairly specific. Not less important, but they have been for a smaller audience perhaps. In respect of available resources, there have sometimes been limitations, but that is not always a bad thing. It is in limitation that the master reveals himself, they say. But I do have an obligation to myself, I think, to develop my craftmanship. That has to do with an increase in scale, for example. For complex technical challenges, I would need much more space. I also want to ‘achieve’ what I have previously achieved with lighting with how I move the camera, that that motivates me and gives me more energy. I am looking for how I can get myself into that position, so that I have the freedom to try it. I don’t know the answer yet. Sometimes I think that the answer lies far away, literally abroad, but I’m not sure if that’s true. It could be a new phase. Working with people who are really good, like those two outside round the corner, Ciarán Hinds and Lesley Manville. The gains are in those things. But he immediately adds: “I have already been able to work with so many excellent actors. With Latifa Mwazi, for example. And I have learnt so much from them.

'White Berry' (2022)

In the Hermanides film White Berry, Mwazi plays Grace, a young woman who struggles with life because of her albinism, until she meets a group of young women and seems to find connection. Her lack of confidence, however, remains a problem. Rap and hip hop colour the film between flats, fields, the river and concrete in a sun-drenched Rotterdam. Al-Dilaimi: “Latifa performed everything so well, but because of her limited sight caused by her albinism, she performed small, her expressiveness was small. Now I think: ‘Should I have gotten closer to help her? Could I have done more?’ That idea stays there, by the way. After a film, I keep philosophizing about what I could have done better.”

Talking about the colour of the film, White Berry is also suffused with it. If one shot is bright blue, the next can just as easily be crimson. Al-Dilaimi pulls out his iPad. Okay, he’s going to show something. There are lots of blocks on the screen, all a different colour. A story or mood board. He asserts that it helps with the colour correction. “It’s like with music, the notation. Film is constructed out of colour tones. Together they create a dynamism that you can use in certain rhythms, a sort of experience. It’s maybe less evident than with music. Then you play notes and in a certain order and it does something to us. I think that that also happens when you watch films, only you can’t analyse it as easily. But if you do that in the preparation, you already see the montage in front of you and that’s why I don’t make it difficult for the editor, despite the many colours sometimes. It saves a lot of time. I’d prefer to invest a lot more time in pre-production. If I had the freedom, I could look for more depth, like I just showed you. I could take it as far as it can go, so that it has an extra layer. I have to do that in my own time at the moment and I do do it, but it should just be a part of the production, paid and all that, then you make it the best. I’m convinced that if you want to outstrip A.I., then you’re going to have to start supporting this. A.I. can’t compete with artistry, it demands other preparations. Software can’t do that. The natural aberrations, the imperfection in the perfection. That’s what I mean. But that automatic pilot, that’s what is going to beat us, if we don’t start doing it differently now.”

NEW DEAL
This seems like a good moment in the interview to broach the subject of the NSC’s manifesto, the New Deal, that has a place in this series of conversations with DoPs. Al-Dilaimi agrees that it is precisely the DoP who can play an important role in making auteur-driven films. And it is now more important than ever, at a time when, to use Al-Dilaimi’s words, machines are able to start making films very quickly. “We will have to find something so that humanity...” He doesn’t finish his sentence. “Why should I go and see a film when I know that it has been made like that? In fact, they are already here, all those format films. We should all be more aware of that. This is the moment. To ensure a dynamic film culture. When is that generation going to take a stand?
“It has,” says Al-Dilaimi, “everything to do with talent and freedom. There needs to be more consideration of that. The artistic aspect is mostly assigned to the direction and production now. You could say that there is top-down management where the creative ‘freedom’ has already allocated by means of the budgeting. I see that in the preparation and also in the schedule. Luckily, there are directors and producers who know that the different departments also have their own signature and way of working and who want to support that, but that is by no means always the case and it is aggravated by the tight schedule for a production. I’m now often asked, we’re all often asked, to perform a balancing act. Sometimes there’s a certain visual language and sometimes it’s ‘just get the job done’”.

What he last saw, by the way, switching topic when asked about what inspires him, was: Beau Travail (1999), directed by Claire Denis. Now a classic, but never released in the Netherlands until now. A film that has been called poetic, with its subjective, tangible camerawork, loosely based on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd and set somewhere on the East African coast with a bunch of French legionnaires. It does not have a happy end. Al-Dilaimi: “I was so impressed! That was an auteur, and that is so relevant now. A terrific film. Refreshing as well and almost a documentary. That focus within the scenes. That choice, what do I show, what not. That’s the synergy between camera and direction, that’s how it feels to me. That there is a sort of trust between them.

'Door Wilskracht Sterk' (2019)

Now that he has mentioned the word ‘documentary’ himself, it is time to address Door Wilskracht Sterk (Strong Through Willpower, 2019) directed by Nina Karim van Oort. It seems like an outlier in Al-Dilaimi’s oeuvre so far, but he loves it. The short film, about the eponymous musical society in a working-class neighbourhood in Arnhem, city in the Netherlands, shows with static shots how the members struggle with the threat of closure. Al-Dilaimi sits up straight. He almost whispers: “Well... I really like talking about it.” He takes his time to think before he starts. “No judgement. There is something about me there that is overarching. It’s like that with everything I make. Whether it’s fiction or a documentary. I don’t want to make it political though. But personally, I think that if you’ve been stuck somewhere where there’s so much prejudice, and you have the ability to analyse it, to understand how the phenomenon works and you can express yourself - me with my camera - than you also have a responsibility. How you label people, how you portray them, you have to be very careful with that.
There were a lot of different coloured lamps hanging there, in that community centre. I took them all out and replaced them with neutral light. Even the sort of light, LEDs, etc., made it uncomfortable to look at. That has an effect. I didn’t want to make a fun fair out of it. I wanted to portray these people with respect. The easiest thing to do is to judge. I found the warmth and their perseverance inspiring. Fine people.”
The conversation naturally turns to locations, also in Al-Dilaimi’s other films. “If you remove the background in a scene, then you only judge the character on his actions or looks. That’s how you get bias. You’re only going to be able to start understanding someone when you know where they are coming from. That’s why the background and how it is in the scenes is so important. Then we can begin with human interaction. That’s important. Sometimes, I choose the locations. I accompany the scout. It’s often already been chosen, of course. In that case, I try to see as early as possible how it can reinforce the characters, how it can support them.”
It is necessary, Al-Dilaimi realises, because it isn’t easy to identify with the characters in ‘his’ trilogy. And that’s what people want, he is very aware of that. Even so, he says, that’s what happens in Femi and Bijt, because the respective actors, Yannick Jozefzoon and Reinout Scholten van Aschat, are so powerful. “Amazing. I can go with that. Because of the colour in Bijt, for example. Guido [Coppis, the director] was also quickly convinced.” Al-Dilaimi continues: “I knew that we had to do something to portray his world, the dystopia, as such. I need a sort of glue, something magical. I started playing around with the photos we’d taken when we were scouting for locations and I submitted two options. The other was a bit more realistic, but this one was chosen. Guido simply thought it was terrific. The producer was also very open and sympathetic, by the way. They had confidence in it. Maybe because it was low budget anyway. We succeeded in depicting an entirely separate world. Guido did what he said he would do.” Tarkovsky has been cited in the press as inspiration, but for Al-Dilaimi, it was Sally Mann, the photographer who uses so much sepia in her work. “That is so magical, as if it is another world. I had it also a little bit in mind for Bijt. Mann is someone who is brazen. She takes photos of her children, of her daughter holding a cigarette, for example. That appeals to me. I also feel less confined by convention, I don’t scare easily.”
With that in mind, are there specific filmmakers with whom he would like to work? This time the answer comes quickly. “With someone I can learn something from as an individual. It is interesting to work with people who are different from me. That can sometimes cause friction, but it brings out new things and you learn from it.” A while back, he learnt something else, also from a photographer. “They showed me that if the camera is here, at a certain height, then it as if everything is floating. We tried other perspectives but that floating effect only worked in that one position. That was instructive. I hadn’t seen it before.”
Continuing on that perspective, the position of his camera: “I want to be in contact with someone. I look at someone. Straight at them. If I talk to someone, but definitely when I’m filming someone, I want the shortest lines. So, nothing with more distance or from another angle simply because it would be more beautiful. I can sometimes see in a shot that a DoP was afraid. Then they keep their distance, then I feel that ‘they don’t really have a relationship with their subject’. It doesn’t have anything to do with close-ups or medium shots, but with the choice of the shortest line. Direct. That is something I look for. That’s why I also centre a lot. I often want to stand close by. I did that for White Berry as much as possible. Not suggesting, but actually being, close up. I discovered at the film academy that I needed that to ‘feel’ it. Something wasn’t working on a particular project and the actor suggested getting closer to him. It was so simple. I don’t get it if I keep my distance, it has to be more human.
In White Berry, there’s a dance scene with Grace’s new friends. That went well. I could get close to them. They were okay with me. They made use of all the space, with that dancing. She, Grace, hesitates. Can she join in? Just like me, actually, with my camera. I took dance lessons, with them, that created a bond. I have also filmed a lot of music videos and that helped with the shooting. I was looking for a way of intensifying the power of the dancing and not to focus on anything else. It was absolutely not about sensuality, but self-expression. The movement and the rhythm... Capturing that, so that it transcends the physical.”

Al-Dilaimi’s remark about video clips brings him finally to Hardwell, the Dutch DJ who he has often filmed, for example, for his film I am Hardwell (dir. Robin Piree, 2013). “It was personal, perhaps because of the music. We were all the same age, Robin, Robbert (van de Corput, i.e. Hardwell) and myself and we went on a journey together. I saw an amazing world. I saw the jet-set life, but also the other side. In the week I went to the film academy, and at the weekend I went out, or we did the montage. Apart from the fact that it was an adventure, it was also fine that I could finance my studies with it. Was Al-Dilaimi a cool kid, with all those Hardwell adventures? “I come from the south; what was I going to be doing that was cool? My parents and I came here as refugees. My perception of what being rich is is so different. That’s why it’s always at the back of my mind: do not judge. I can’t be any different. It’s who I am. That’s why I found it so difficult to go to Amsterdam. How can I... It’s not what I am. Here, you have to say what you have done, but for me, it speaks for itself, I don’t have to say it, you have to be able to see it in my work. Other people have been trained to demonstrate every step they take. That self-promotion... That’s why talking about it is uncomfortable.” Aziz Al-Dilaimi ends the interview with that, because he wants to go outside one more time before they start striking the set.
That discomfort is also apparent later. On reading the text, Al-Dilaimi cannot emphasize enough that it’s not about him, but ‘opportunity’. The opportunity to work with the directors, the actors, the crew, making the ‘opportunity’ together, creating. As long as that is clear enough in the interview.

Gerlinda Heywegen
Translation: Terry Ezra