Rachida Brackney.

In Kadur, her first book, Rachida Brackney, is a beautiful tribute to her father, set over five days, during which we don’t know if his body will be able to make it to Algeria or not; August 15 is the holiday and the restrictions associated with it. Covid is in full swing. Memories emerge, past and present connect to give a face, a body, a story to this silent man, to whom his daughter gives a place and a voice, hoping to continue through his story a dialogue that will transcend silence. and disappearing… An interview with an actress who turns out to be a writer.

The influence of Annie Ernaux

“The place It was a blast for me. I was a Conservatory student, 23 years old, I read little modern literature, Annie Erno and I did not have the same culture, the same background, or the same background, and yet her story resonated deeply with me until it became; , finally, the trigger to write Kadur: We don’t care much about our parents’ stories when we are young, it is only when we grow up that we have to find answers to some questions. I felt the need to know where they came from, seeing in them for a long time only the figures of father and mother, imagining nothing else, from childhood to sexual life… When my father left, I needed: reread the place and it all went from there.”

Bring your parents out of anonymity

“The story of my parents is taken up in the image of a kind of global, formless mass: the immigrant worker, and apart from the work of Abdelmalek Sayad, there are few sociological studies on this topic. I had to give flesh to things and bring my father and mother out of invisibility, of anonymity, especially since, like Annie Erno’s parents, they are silent, without my knowing whether it is due to their class, culture or temperament. Some time ago I spoke to a woman who was the daughter of Portuguese immigrants and who told me that she recognized her father’s face in me. Both cherished the hope of returning to their country of origin, but had children, settled down, and exile, from temporary, became permanent. All their lives they walked in between, in a gray zone where they were not at home; they weren’t from here, they weren’t from there anymore, their children were taking turns experiencing it, and they felt even more lost. They didn’t foresee the gap and distance between their sons and daughters… “When you have your bachelor’s degree, I will be able to come back,” said my father. But that was clearly never the case.’

Underclass?

“I’m trans because my life is very different from my parents’ life, and I’m not one because, as I note in the book, the habit doesn’t make you a monk, but allows you to enter a monastery. If you’re Caucasian, say, like Annie Ernot or Didier Eribon, you can pretend more easily, integrate with less difficulty, than if you’re black, Asian, or Arab. Our figure creates the first impression, it occupies an extremely important place in society, we are perceived accordingly, and sometimes it turns into an idea, outline, stereotype. I wanted to separate my parents from the crowd and show their complexity and nuances.

The “gender” perception of people of Arab origin

“From my personal experience, stereotypes differ by gender. When I was young, I attributed it to my father’s and mother’s personality differences, and it wasn’t until I grew up that I realized it was a gender phenomenon. Frantz Fanon has presented this excellent theory. a woman’s body is a body to be mastered. The first victims of wars and conflicts are women, who are raped almost ritualistically. As a student, I worked in a bar where the owner made blatantly racist comments about blacks and Arabs, and when I talked to him about it, he always told me that I was different because I was a girl. You can be perfectly racist and want to own, colonize the body of a racialized woman… I’m often told that I don’t understand why girls do better and I think it’s because men are being watched are as potential. danger and woman as an object of desire;

Annie Erno and I did not have the same background or the same background, and yet her story resonated deeply with me, to the point that it became the impetus to write. Kadur

Rachida Brackney

Feeling Racism as an Actress

“I didn’t have the codes, I came to the theater by accident, I dreamed of becoming a lawyer. I only went there for my future requests. Then I discovered the beauty of language and the texts that continue to resonate beyond their time. But I never asked myself a representative question, because I never went to the theater or the cinema. So I didn’t realize that no one had my face in plays and movies, I naively thought that only work and talent counted… I immediately wiped off all the plasters; Comédie-Française, get a César, then a Molière or become a L’Oréal muse. I became a symbol against myself. at the exit of ChaosBy Colin Serault, the line between the artistic and the personal was completely erased. In the eyes of many, I was this young girl who was forced to marry and had to run away…”

Theater versus cinema

“The theater was my breath of fresh air, even if the anecdote I tell about how some people were surprised by what I could say about the Alexandrians is very true. I could aspire to play roles that would have been off-limits to me in cinema, where the spectrum is much smaller. I remember seeing a production when I was a student at the Conservatory King Lear by Peter Sellers, whose daughters were played by a black actress, an Asian actress and a white actress. No one had asked the question of their species or origin. Similarly, I was able to play Juni Britannicus or the queen in Rui Blas without anyone getting upset. Age and looks matter less. Is this related to a greater tolerance, a difference in conditioning with the audience? I also have the feeling that a certain social category dominates cinema at all levels, even if things are changing; there are more women directors, women in general, more diversity. When I was at the Conservatoire, I was the only recipient of a scholarship, and the people I met in the film world were, for the most part, also enjoying considerable material and cultural comfort. Perhaps this was also the reason why I felt so little with many of the issues and themes addressed in the films…”.