The very role of music has always been essential in Flore’s movies. Meeting Snowden, her previous film and our first collaboration enabled us to elaborate a common vocabulary to discuss her expectations and intentions for this film.
As most of her work, this film is combative. Flore asked me a narrative music which will serve the purpose of the film rather than embellish beautiful shots. The idea was to put a music where it was not expected, where it will surprise and not smooth the film. Filming after filming, I felt the general tone was becaming harder. Deep. Flore wanted a score that matches this tone without being violent. She wanted a music of fight, of warriors, with some lights, poetry.
The film set up is realistic – Flore films her character in their environments, which are rural and very organic. All of that made me go for acoustic sounds.
- To support Melati in her quest, the music needed to be fragile and bold at the same time. So, I chose to write a little ensemble with a piano and a string quartet. I wanted an intimate music, almost classical, to suggest the universal nature of her cause. It worked on some type of lyrical tone to highlight the emotions and the interconnected ness of the characters. Soloists enabled me to reinforce the tessitura of the ensemble.
- The flute indeed symbolizes Mohamad’s fight in Lebanon with touches of music from the Middle-East. The bass trombone adds some tension to the slow-motion portraits sequences.
- The combination of bass, double bass and the percussionist grounded the soundtrack to match the very action of Winnie, our incredible female farmer in Uganda who teaches refugees how to survive.
- The percussion also served as a link with René, who lives in Rio’s favelas and whose daily life is punctuated by batucadas and gunshots.
- Percussion takes a different meaning when it comes to Xiu, the indegenous american in the film. For him, the rhythm goes beyond the tribal aspect, up to his fight against shale gas he now pushes though his music: hip hop.
* : The original soundtrack is excluded from the CC BY-NC-ND license. More details on the legal notices page.