With Grimmfest just two weeks away, we caught up with Megalomaniac writer/director Karim Ouelhaj to tell us more about the film.
What can you tell us about crafting Megalomaniac?
The writing of the script was elaborated in two phases. The first was a classic pattern: find the theme and do the most thorough research on the veracity of the subject. The second was to get away from it as much as possible to be able to refine the story and make it fit into a realistic budget and to prune the writing as much as possible, so that I wouldn’t lose too many of my directing ideas on the day of the shooting.
So we can say that the writing was efficient. Then the shooting, which was very short: 16 days, was necessarily intense.
There too I had to be extremely attentive in the preparation of the shooting, not to lose time. And despite the cold and the rather precarious conditions, the good mood was there because the whole team knew that it was rather rare to participate in this kind of film in Belgium. Everyone gave it their all and we were able to get the film in on time. However, it took me 4 long years to finish it.
The genesis of the film, however, if that’s what you’re referring to, is quite particular. I wanted to make a film more visceral than cerebral. A film that is received by the gut, where emotion takes all the place, that of the characters as well as that of the spectator. The whole film was designed in this sense and it is really with the music and the sound process that we realized that we had achieved this.
You ask questions about themes such as patriarchy, is it a balance to ensure these themes are fully represented?
All the subjects of my films have a societal background (drugs, prostitution, injustice, violence made to the weakest, etc…) Megalomaniac deals with patriarchy indeed, but not only. We can also detect the alienation of our society: the relationship to the body, social networks…
But above all I ask questions: how can a victim like Martha become an executioner? How is it that those who have the power to stop the suffering, can let it happen without saying anything?
My themes should not drown the film in morals, that is not my intention. The real subject of the film is the evil in us (no matter what form it takes in my film), this loop of evil that is in us human beings, the eternal mistakes that we make from generation to generation through time. Maybe it’s time to look ourselves in the face and fully assume who we are. I am convinced that looking evil in the face is the best way to fight it. Not only the patriarchy. That’s what I tried to do with this film.
What can you tell us about the casting process?
I had already worked with most of the actors, except Eline and Benjamin. But the trust was established from the first reading of the script, especially since my intentions on paper are often clear, so there was no ambiguity possible. The trust was established very early on with all the actors, only in this way can I get the extraordinary things on the set. There is only one point of view, only one look at them, because I frame my films myself, so I think the actors feel confident, they feel that I am with them.
This is your first feature in a few years, did it feel good to be back on set?
Like all directors, I guess, I want to be on a movie set as much as possible, it’s my job, it’s my life and my passion.
How would you describe the film to viewers heading to Grimmfest?
Like all genre viewers, I want to feel emotions and reflections through the proposed films. I hope my film will be an intense and disturbing journey for those who are willing to plunge into the depths of the human soul. This kind of festival allows us to offer this, on different scales of course. Let’s make it clear that Megalomaniac is not afraid to go into certain forbidden territories, for the others there is the streaming.
Is the plan to tour the festival circuit and then release on streaming or DVD/Blu Ray?
Festivals are important for me because there is still a certain form of freedom of expression. But especially for a film like Megalomaniac, the experience of the theater is very important, without the immersive sound of a theater you lose more than half of the film. As far as physical media is concerned, for the moment my German and American distributors are considering a collector’s box set in addition to a theatrical release and I’m happy about that. As far as streaming is concerned, it is not interesting for a director like me, either for visibility or finances. It doesn’t return anything. And this kind of movie is killed if you watch it on a computer screen, I don’t even want to imagine a phone screen…
Megalomaniac screens at Grimmfest 2022.
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