By Ziad Nawfal

American actor/director Sean Gullette was in Sharjah to present his first film as a director, Traitors (Khawana), as part of Sharjah Biennial 11’s series of commissioned films, Seven Short Plots.

The film constitutes an interesting and well-executed examination of a young Moroccan girl's (and aspiring rock singer) reaction to her mother's supposed infidelity.

How did the Biennial approach you regarding this project?

Sean Gullette: I was having Moroccan food with Rasha Salti (co-curator of this year’s Biennial) at the Cannes Film Festival last year, when she told me that she was putting together this film series, with Suzanne Cotter and others. She gave me a hint of what the keywords would be, and the word traitors jumped out at me. I thought of treachery in the most intimate sense, within the family. And of what it means to be a traitor, more specifically a political traitor, today.

Why did you choose to set the story in Morocco?

I live in Tangiers. I’ve lived there for the past six years with my wife Yto Barrada, who’s the founder of the Tangiers Cinémathèque, one of the region’s first non-profit cinema centers.

To which extent were the Biennial curators involved with the development of your film project?

I was given total freedom, total trust.

Did the fact that you were given complete liberty to pursue your project complicate the process for you? Did you ever experience second thoughts while making this film?

Well, the initial point of inspiration was a really good one. And the master-texts that the Biennial’s curators created for this challenge were very helpful. It’s interesting to have some sort of a constraint. I chose the word traitors, and the idea of treason, and away you go. It’s great to have a point of departure like that. People say you can make a film about anything. You can make a film about a man sitting in the front of the cinema, about the man who cleans the ashtrays… This was a slightly richer point of departure.