Santa Barbara

YOU RESEMBLE ME aka TU ME RESSEMBLES.

SBIFF 2022

With director: Dina Amer

By Emmanuel Itier

Dina Amer is a maverick director/producer. Not only the Egyptian born talented filmmaker who grew up between Egypt and the USA helped produced the Emmy award-winning Documentary, ‘The Square’ but she managed with success to direct her first feature, ‘Tu me resembles’, in French and on a very tricky subject matter: a woman drifting into islam extresmism to become a suicide female bomber in Paris. Dina is a daredevil, and she has a pure soul. She is not afraid to tackle with the harsh duality and reality of life. Her film “verité” is a testimony to her talent that will land her in the panthéon of iconic filmmaker. Don’t miss ‘You resemble me’ and be ready to be shaken and transformed.

Q: Was it challenging to direct such a film?

Dina: Yes, for sure. To start I showed the project to a mentor of mine, a man, and he asked me why I was going to direct this film. He even proposed we could become “co-creators”.  And I could see it wasn’t because it was my first directorial effort but because I was a woman! I explained that I wanted to direct it because I care more than anyone else about the subject matter and the lead character who happens to also be a woman. I can understand this woman who is trying to face-shift and to code shift. I understand where she is coming from even, so I don’t approve about what she is going to do ultimately. Thank God I had my great producer, Elizabeth Woodward, and other women who came on board, stepped up and backed me up. I even walked away from a deal at Amazon because I wanted to keep my independence and the integrity of my vision for this film. For sure it was a challenge and I had to prove myself much more than if I was a man.

Q: What were you trying to achieve with this film and how do you think it can change the view about muslim women?

Dina: My first intention was to understand how these headlines of violence happen and to get to the root of who these human beings are beyond these acts of violence. We need to understand why this happens if you want to tackle it. People think, in general, that muslim women are weak, that they are always in the shadow of a man, that they are not interesting and even if they are totally covered, sometimes, they have a real sex drive. So, I hope this movie shows all of that about muslim women. These women are strong and vey complex. They have to fight against so much in order to live as they want.

Q: What do you hope people get from this film, what is the biggest take-away from ‘You resemble me’?

Dina: It’s for the audience to reflect on itself. For people to reflect on themselves as human beings. And see the ways where they are blaming others about their race, their religion, and change that judgement about the others. Actually, hopefully, they realize that the others are like them, are close to them than they think. And yes, there needs to be accountability for people’s actions, but we are all on this planet together, so we have to find a way to understand each other if we want Peace. Look at what is happening in Ukraine right now, the world is so fragile. And when people think they don’t have a place where to belong, and they give into violence, we all lose! So, we need to find a way to understand each other and make the change we want to see in this world.