[Editorial] Director Julien Maury Talks All Things Kandisha

Having watched and reviewed Kandisha recently, it was a real pleasure and privilege to talk to Julien Maury, one of the minds behind the film. The other writer-director, Alexandre Bustillo, was unavailable but that wasn’t going to get in the way of the interview; as Julien said “we’re two persons but one brain, so it’s OK.”

I asked Julien how their partnership had started. “That was long ago now,” answered Julien. “We started to work together fifteen years ago now (Inside was shot in 2006). We started in the most classical way, with a mutual friend. Alex used to be a journalist for the French Fangoria, which is called Mad Movies, a magazine about horror and fantasy; and I used to read that magazine since my youngest age, because my older brother was a fan of horror movies. When Alex was hired, I felt a connection, because I agreed with all of his choices and every movie he loved I loved as well, and I thought he was really funny. So one day I went to the DVD shop owned by the magazine and I asked the manager ‘is Alex Bustillo a cool guy? Because I love to read his articles, and I would be deceived if I learn that he is an asshole.’ And the guy said ‘I don’t know him, but he is writing scripts, and you are directing short movies: maybe it would fit between the two of you.’ That’s what happened! I called him and said ‘we don’t know each other, but this guy David thinks we can work’ and neither Alex nor I had any connection in the movie industry, so we decided we’d do things like Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi: do it with our friends, shooting in the back yard or a forest. We already had the idea for Inside and were lucky enough to find a producer, and that’s how it all started.”

Sounds like good fortune to find someone like that with similar tastes… but surely they didn’t both have the idea for Inside? That must have been like jumping in at the deep end in terms of making a first film together. “No, Alex came up with the first draft,” explained Julien. “And when I read it, I was wow! If we succeed in making such a movie in France, it’s going to be awesome! So we did it! It was the right time: at that moment, the French TV channel called Canal+ was looking for French horror movies, so it was good timing.”

The pair’s film style – especially with regard to Inside – has been described as “extreme”. I asked Julien how he felt about that label. “I don’t know. Sure, Inside was extreme, so it’s OK for that one to have the label. The other movies… well we have some gory moments, which is what we love as an audience, and so naturally it’s something we want to do as directors. So the later films aren’t extreme, but the label may have stuck since Inside. We always have an approach that can be hardcore for some people, but it’s not very dark; not like A Serbian Film and that kind of thing, not so dour or serious. I think we will always turn towards the audience and want them to have fun, enjoy the show.”

I’ve not seen Among the Living, but Inside, Livid and now Kandisha all focus on female characters. As a male writing duo, I asked how Julien and Alex go about writing relatable women for their stories. “It’s always complicated to analyse your own job, but for us, we always felt that having strong women as leads was interesting for us. We tried not to go into cliché, like Ripley in Alien or Sarah Connor in The Terminator; to us, they look like men, women acting as men. For us, we wanted to be more original and relevant. For example, in Inside, our first idea was more classical: we always saw movies with a Bogeyman and a “final girl” running, and our first draft had the idea of a man chasing a pregnant woman. Then at one point we switched: we thought if a woman was chasing a woman, that would be different, more visceral combined with the pregnancy idea. We don’t think about it when we write the story, except we like to write for women.”

Kandisha is largely made up of an unknown cast, and I asked Julien about how these terrific actors had been found. “We did a traditional casting by receiving young, promising women, and we had a casting director showed us some tapes: it was a long process, but we were determined that the three girls would be modern, and to have this ability of really easy talk. They were able to improvise and change the dialogue, because me and Alex are not tyrant directors: we don’t insist they cannot change anything in the script, but instead try to involve everyone, especially the cast. We love for the girls to bring part of themselves and something they could be proud of. We would ask them ‘for you, who is this character? Can they really say this or say that? Think like this or like that?’ That’s why we took time for the long process and were really pleased with these three girls.”

I didn’t know whether Alex or Julien had any family heritage in Morocco, so I asked what it was that had drawn them to the Aicha Kandisha legend. “No, it wasn’t from our backgrounds. It was actually Alex that told me about the legend at first, as he was living in Paris suburbs with Moroccan friends. There’s a thing we love to do: when we meet someone, we always ask him ‘what is your biggest fear? What frightens you the most?’ We are always curious, because fear is very personal. And each time he asked Moroccan people, they always, always, always answer Aicha Kandisha. That was very interesting and so we started to make some research about it and we discovered that it was a very Moroccan legend, but it is also something you can find in many other cultures: she is like a mermaid, or has wings, you can find her in ancient Greece or Asia. We felt that we could change it just a bit to bring it to life. It is based on real events that took place in sixteenth century: she was a rebel, because at this time Morocco was a Portuguese colony. She attracted soldiers to the resistance and they killed the soldiers, and the legend followed: the stories were that the soldiers were attacked with a jinn, and so she became like a jinn.”

I understand their next film, The Deep House, also has a supernatural element. I asked Julien if they preferred to carry on in this vein of horror, and have now moved away from the realism of Inside. “No, as directors we really want to explore different aspects of the genre, because as viewers, we love fantasy, pure horror, science fiction, ghost stories, monster movies. So as directors we have a lot of avenues: it’s not a wish, but random. We are always working on scripts, and you can never know when you will find the right producer, when any story is going to happen or even if. So it was random chance that we had more fantasy in The Deep House and Kandisha because we already did some fantasy in Livid, and we do still love realistic horror movies too. I’m sure we are going to come back one day to the realism.”

When this interview took place, Kandisha was about to be released as a Shudder Original. I asked Julien how he felt about that. “Of course, we are big fans of theatre and the big screen. But regarding the pandemic situation, I think we are really lucky, and the most important thing for us is that the movie can be seen. The worst scenario would have been if it was forgotten on a shelf and disappear. The movie was supposed to be released in theatres in France, but then we had the second lockdown, and so the distributors declared ‘OK this is not going to work: let’s forget about it and find another way to the audience.’ So we are really, really happy that Shudder is releasing: it is watched by our fan base, the horror fan base.”

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