Hold Back

Rengaine

Fearless, inventive filmmaking featuring frequent moments that surprise and disarm.

Even if a screening is sold out, tickets are often available 30 minutes before the start of the film at the box office at each venue.


Image gallery

  • Director-Screenwriter Rachid Djaïdani
  • Producer Anne-Dominique Toussaint, Rachid Djaïdani
  • With Slimane Dazi, Stéphane Soo Mongo, Sabrina Hamida
  • France 2012
  • 75 mins
  • Sales Pathé International

In present-day Paris, Sabrina (Sabrina Hamida), a young North African woman, falls in love with Dorcy (Stéphane Soo Mongo), a black Christian trying to make ends meet as an actor. They plan to get married, but when rumour gets out about their engagement, Slimane (Slimane Dazi), the eldest of Sabrina’s 40 brothers, is disgusted that his Arab Muslim sister would consider such a union. He is determined that Sabrina should stay faithful to familial and community traditions, and traipses the city in search of her. From this starting point, the first full-length feature from French novelist and actor Rachid Djaïdani develops into a provocative, freewheeling analysis of attitudes to race and religion in modern-day France that’s pertinent and relevant beyond the country. Presented in an appealingly raw style that nods to John Cassavetes, Hold Back is fearless, inventive filmmaking featuring frequent moments that surprise and disarm.
Michael Hayden

Image © Sabrazaï

Director statement

The minute I decided to make a film, I went on and never quit. I’m always reacting to the clichés and prejudices in which they’re trying to enclose me since I didn’t get the best hand in the deal upon birth. I’ve considered this movie as a growth experience, beyond cinema, beautiful and violent at the same time. And I’ve worked on Hold Back the same way I do with my books. I’ve also realised that meeting Christophe Rossignon and Mathieu Kassovitz back upon La Haine had been crucial and had pushed me to get involved in this project. I remember discovering Kassovitz shooting at Place Saint-Eustache – he was huddled up in a foetal position, head in hands, with all his technicians gathered around him in concentration. There was nothing but silence. This image really hit me and made me want to do films. Another person I’ve met really mattered – Peter Brook. The first time we met, he asked me if I knew Shakespeare. I told him about the movie Romeo + Juliet since I had not seen the play, but explained that the issue of difference and exclusion was running through my blood. Indeed, my mother is from Sudan and my father from Algeria. I’ve worked with Peter for five or six years, and he initiated me to improvisation.
Rachid Djaïdani

Director biography

At the age of 24 Rachid Djaïdani worked as a production assistant on Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine, but it took a detour via a boxing career, in which he became the Ile-de-France champion, before he returned to the cinema when deciding to take up acting. Only small roles in such movies as Ma 6-T va crack-er and on television (as a police officer in Police District on M6 channel, and in Rachid au Texas on France 4 channel) ensued, until he joined Peter Brook’s theatre company, going on an international tour for five years and performing in three plays: Hamlet, Le Costume and Tierno Bokar. His first novel, Boumkoeur, was published in 1999, and became a bestseller, with over 100,000 sales. It portrays the everyday life of the dwellers of a public housing project with tenderness and fairness, and Djaïdani followed it up with two further books: Mon Nerf in 2004 and Viscéral in 2007. Concurrently, while still getting the odd role as a film and TV actor, he made a feature documentary, Sur ma ligne, which screened at the 2007 Cannes Festival. In 2011 his shorter doc La Ligne brune was shown at the Dubai International Film Festival, and in the same year he directed a web series for Arte TV, Une heure avant la date. In 2012, after nine years in development, he put the finishing touches to Hold Back, a no-budget feature film.

Filmography

2007 Sur ma ligne [doc]
2011 La Ligne brune [doc s]
2012 Rengaine (Hold Back)