Twelve-year-old Eya grapples with her beloved older brother Younès' sudden death, finding solace in her creativity, resilience, and the support of Younès' friends as she navigates the intense grieving process.
EN
Aurore Engelen: You opted for fiction to tell a story we’ve often seen in the papers. Did fiction help you to move these stories out of the domain of news headlines and to bring them to life?
Maja-Ajmia Yde Zellama: It’s clear that a documentary would have individualised the story, whereas fiction allows it to be universal. And it’s true that when the film was presented in Berlin, lots of people from all over the world told me how good it was to feel they’d been represented in a different way. When I was small, I was really impacted by the issue of representation, especially when it came to reading; I felt like I couldn’t see myself anywhere. It’s something I’m very sensitive to. And if I’m honest, I would definitely have preferred for my film to be one in a long line of films telling stories about people who look like the people in my film. I never wanted to be the first.
Aurore Engelen in conversation with Maja-Ajmia Yde Zellama1
- 1Aurore Engelen, “Maja-Ajmia Yde Zellama, Director of Têtes Brûlées. "I was interested in showing how much more responsible a 12-year-old can be than an adult",” Cineuropa, 28 February 2025.
