A Q&A with French Filmmaker Soraya Milla on Exploring Black Hair and Identity Through Filmmaking
Soraya Milla Is 'Healing' Through Film
The black girl stays in the picture.
This young filmmaker is illuminating the Afro-French experience using her roles both on and off camera. Meet Soraya Milla.
The invisibility of Afro-French and mixed race women in the film industry is frequently protested in France, including last year at the Cannes Film Festival. Thus, in the collective American reimagining of the French experience -oft-times exported by expats- very rarely is inclusion taken into account.
This is why we think that the screen work that Soraya is doing is dope.
Soraya, who grew up with parents in the television industry, recollects a childhood that included filming, TV sets, and backstage life. While some parents were doing traditional 9-to-5s, in elementary school, Soraya recalls her parents shooting a documentary about the Komians, a fetishist community in the East of the country.
By the tender age of 10 years old, Soraya had already caught the filmmaking bug. Aside from the obvious influences of seeing her parents dedicate themselves to the film/tv industry, Soraya’s passion for filmmaking ignited after her class was asked to write, shoot and produce a short film.
Aprés Josephine caught up with Soraya to discuss her perspective on capturing hair and identity on film.
Tell us about “Exotique.” How did the idea to tackle black hair in white and black spaces come about?
During my last year at film school in Belgium, I wrote a pitch about a black girl living in a very rich neighborhood of Brussels and going to a private school. She’s very popular there, has the most handsome white boyfriend, the best weaves and skinny jeans. Then one day, by accident, she eats plantain chips and gets a stomach ache. That’s actually her sleeping African roots. At night, she starts to sleepwalk and go to Cameroonian and Congolese restaurants in Matongé, the African neighborhoods of the city. There, she eats all kinds of sauces, beignets, and fried plantains and dances all night, but she doesn’t remember anything when she wakes up. After a few weeks, her hips start to get larger, and the hair relaxer can’t relax her roots anymore, no matter how long she keeps it in, and her boyfriend dumps her.
I didn’t know what to do with that script. It was the first time I wrote something so personal, and something about the black experience. I felt very shy about it although my teacher and classmates found it good. I put it aside and left my film school to study film production in Paris. Five months later, my little brother asked me again about that script that all my family really liked. He said I should do it. I thought I was done with film direction, but thanks to him, the confidence and the desire I once had were back again. I had no budget to make a feature film or a fantastic film. So, I worked on a more naturalist transcription of the story. The first title of the short film was “Blacking Out”. As we were in France, I was afraid that people would not get the meaning of that expression. So, I’ve changed it to Exotic. I will always regret that choice. So, this is how Exotic was born; by chance. An intuition. An awakening. Definitely not in full consciousness and awareness. It was back in 2012 or 2013 when the topic of natural hair and self-acceptance was not as hip as it is today. I had these emotional wounds from my teenagehood and found no echo of that experience in recent French films or books at that time. So, I thought I should do it by myself, to heal myself.
Exotique is currently available on Air France flights. Did they acquire the film rights? Where else can people view Exotic?
[On my 30th birthday] my cousin Cedric flew all the way from the Ivory Coast to surprise me. I wasn’t expecting him at all, then when I saw him, I started to cry, overcome with emotion. He showed me a photo on his phone of the “Exotique” poster on his airplane screen. I thought it was fake! I didn’t know anything about that sale! I only vaguely remember a conversation with the producer months ago about a distributor that may have a deal with airlines, but nothing that seemed concrete or promising; so I erased it from my memory. I’m not expecting a big amount of money, it’s a short film, and I only own 20% of the sales as the filmmaker. But I fly very often, and I love in-flight entertainment. The very idea of people “getting high” with “Exotique” makes me [feel on top of the world]. We made this short film with nothing and had no expectations, so it’s a great reward to know how far it has come. People can also watch “Exotique” on streaming platforms such as Kweli TV, IndieFlix , AfrolandTV, 1001ciné. They also offer free trials! (Just saying).
I saw the familiar area of Chateau d’Eau (or Strausbourg St. Denis) at the beginning of the film. How was it filming in one of the busiest parts of town?
It was hard! First of all, the first day of shooting was on July 14th (national day), so it wasn’t busy at all! Everyone was on vacation or sleeping that morning when I was expecting to shoot in a boiling neighborhood. The first shot was the character of Philoméne exiting the metro station. The moment I said “action,” we had to stop because the national guard was passing by with horses. We were already late in the planning, and that long interruption made it even worse. Then we went to shoot inside a hair salon. It’s a place where I used to do my hair, and they agreed to let us use the place for the whole morning, but after two hours, they wanted their place back unless we paid them. They forced us to turn the lights off. Some shots of Philomène doing her hair were shot with just a light panel that we managed to keep. It was my first short film, and it was very stressful! Now all of this seems very funny!
A lot of my friends experienced anxiety in the area because of the aggressive quest by the workers to convince new clientele to get their hair braided. Does the environment change when you are there to shoot a short film?
Ahahaha! Yes, for the first time I had an armor against these guys we call “rabbatteur” in French. They’re so pushy, it’s awful! But surrounded by my crew and seeing the equipment, they left me alone for the first time. They even helped the actor who played one of them to improve his acting, showing him little tricks. It was really nice.
Natural hair worn in an afro seems to be growing in France. How has hair --be it natural, weaved, or relaxed-- played a role in your life in France versus, say, Côte d’Ivoire?
I’d say that it was the same experience actually. During my childhood in the 90s, and as a teen in early 2000, it was the Dark and Lovely era. Relaxed hair was hip. Everyone had relaxed hair in middle school in Ivory Coast unless you had naturally wavy curly hair, like in the commercials. We relaxed our hair so much with my cousin Amanda that once I burned all my scalp. We wanted to keep the relaxer as long as possible; we were ashamed of our roots. Back in France, at 13, I had to cut my hair very short because of my burnt scalp. I cried a lot. My older brother told me I was ugly. I bought a postiche to have a ponytail. But, one day, during a school trip, my classmates played with it on the bus. I was mortified!! I only felt beautiful and confident when my hair was braided. I was listening to Beyoncé’s album “Dangerously in Love” all the time back in the days, and she was my model. Her and Aaliyah. I found them so beautiful with their long straight hair compared to Macy Gray and her natural hair. At least with my braids, I was getting closer to that model and could shake my hair when I was dancing at the parties, just like my white friends. I just wanted to fit in and appeal to every young man, whether they were White, Black, Asian, or Blasian! And straight long hair seemed to be the way back in early 2000, no matter where you were living on this planet. The funny thing is, I was also listening to “Mama’s Gun” album at that time, but I didn’t really pay attention to Erykah’s hairstyle. Maybe because she’s wearing a headscarf in most of the album pictures, it’s only 6 years later that I was struck on the internet by a picture of her wonderful afro haircut and I decided I wanted the same. My friend Clemence, who is white, cut all my hair that night. It was a radical choice. The next few months, people called me sir a lot. I started to wear a flower in my hair, and that accessory is still part of my natural hairstyle today.
“I had these emotional wounds from my teenagehood and found no echo of that experience in recent French films or books at that time. ”
Any plans to turn Exotique into a feature film?
Not a feature but a TV show, yes! It’s all written in collaboration with my mother. It would be about Philomene adventures, ten years later, as a grown-up in the Black Lives Matter era. We signed an option with a production company, fingers crossed!
All films need money to be brought to life - what’s the funding process like in France?
It’s really more institutionalized than in Anglo Saxon countries, I think. We try to get money from the regions, the national office of cinema, TV channels, and specific public funds. We spend a lot of time writing “dossiers,” a process that I both love and hate. If we don’t succeed, many people are ready to give up. That’s the bad thing about it. I have friends in the UK who totally self-funded their short film and made it to Sundance. They’re real hustlers. I’m an old pirate who used to self-fund a lot of my productions and didn’t like the idea of waiting 3 years to make a short film, because there would be two countries involved in the production, all of them waiting for commission result for instance. After five years of practice, I try to do things more conventionally.
You are currently working on a documentary about Afropeans traveling to New Orleans to explore the similarities between Afropeans and African Americans. What did you discover in terms of commonalities while filming in New Orleans?
I really want to answer that question, but I also really want you to watch the documentary and have this debate afterward! All I can say is that Black experience around the world is full of nuances and shades. We all have very different points of view that are important to stress. The two communities don’t really mingle despite the fact they both originate from the continent of Africa.
They have a lot of stereotypes about each other. I’d love to say, “Yes, I went to the United States to meet Afro-Americans, and we’re all brothers!” That’s what globalization wants me to claim, but the truth is that I sometimes felt like an alien. And, I’m sure you sometimes feel the same here in France too. And, that’s enriching to talk about.
I love that book of Maya Angelou 'All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes' (1986) about her experience in Ghana back in the ’60s. She had a hard time! I also love Maryse Condé autobiography “La vie sans Fard,” about her experience as an Afropean in Africa at approximately the same moment. I absolutely love Americanah by Chimamande Ngozie because she exposes these cultural differences between Afropean and Afro-Americans. I feel an echo to my experience in Ivory Coast, in France, and in the U.S. The Black experience is a huge patchwork, and every voice should be heard for a proper reflection of our community.
Are there any discernible differences between filming in the United States versus filming in France?
The documentary has been done in a very pirate style so far, which is my trademark. I honestly don’t think there are many differences between filming in France and the U.S for a documentary. If I shoot a fiction in the US one day, I think that I will experience the shock, so many European filmmakers talk about.
Now, correct me if I’m wrong: Exotic, Vitiligo, and the documentary you are currently working on seem to share a common theme of identity, or, at the very least, finding comfort in one's skin. What about this theme connected with you?
I grew up in between France and Ivory Coast. I have two brothers, and oddly enough, it seems that I’m the only one who suffers from living in between two cultures and has this feeling to belong both everywhere and nowhere. I dedicated Exotic to my little brother, Diego, but it was useless, he has so much self-confidence, no matter what environment he’s in. A friend told me about the 3rd Culture Kid phenomenon --kids who move between cultures before they have had the opportunity to fully develop their personal and cultural identity.
Maybe the fact that I moved at 9 years old to west Africa and came back at 13 to a white environment, at an age you’re so sensitive about how people perceive you explain why I’m so concerned with this theme. It was a big cultural shock at that time, and it was really weird to have to re-appropriate my own culture. I dissociated my friends from Ivory Coast and Benin from my French friends because I had no clue about how to make these two worlds match. It took me a while to reconcile these two parts of my identity. It’s a work in progress. My films help me, especially when I share it with the audience and we talk afterwards. At a recent screening in Brussels for Women’s Day, the discussion was so powerful and enlightening, I cried in the end because I felt that the audience’s words healed me for good.
Who inspires you, creatively?
My family. I have family living in Ivory Coast; I have family in Wisconsin; I have family living in very posh Paris neighborhoods; I have family that struggles to make a living, I have a cousin who is very light-skinned but he’s the most “African” of all of us; I have a cousin who never dated a black man her whole life; I have a dark-skinned cousin who hates his skin; I have cousins who never left Douala (Cameroun), and are very envious of those of us who live in western countries; I have homophobic cousins and gay cousins…and sometimes we all sit at a table. I don’t know if one lifetime will be enough to tell all these stories. Justin Siemen managed to say a lot in Dear White People, but sometimes it gives me a headache watching it!
Are there other French filmmakers of color whose work you admire(d)? If so, who and why?
What is admiration? When I love someone’s work, I want to talk to them for hours about the mysteries of creation, laugh stupidly with them, dance with them, eat fried plantains with them and maybe eventually collaborate with them. I met amazing people at Pavillon Afriques in Cannes this year; I didn’t really pay attention to the nationality, there were so many. My favorite “french speaking” encounter was with Mael le Miel, my Cameroonian fellow. Mael, I love you!
Can you share a film that has changed your life?
The amateur film I shot in Ivory Coast when I was 10. It’s called “Family Affair.” It gave me the awakening of what I wanted to do with my life. Never minimize the power of amateur films! I also think that some episodes of “Ma Famille” (an Ivorian soap opera) are life changing. It’s too bad they’re not subtitled in English.