Au- delà de Gibraltar :
genèse de l'album

The composer

Abdelli: composer of the film’s original sound track with his friend Thierry Van Roy.

With Abdelli, the film found it’s perfect musical and spiritual counterpart.

Discovered and produced by Peter Gabriel under his Real World label, Abdelli came from Kabylia (Algeria) and is living in Brussels since 1986.

He blends in with traditional Berber tones the harvest of music collected especially in Central Asia and in South America.
Inspired by a dreamlike imagination, he gives sound to immemorial depths of diverse origins.

“If cultures were respected and valued,
hate would not be possible”, he says.

Le film

Karim loves Sophie and Sophie loves Karim.

A love story like so many others? Yes and no.

Yes, because love is life and it is at the core of so many films.
No, absolutely not because for the first time in the history of Belgian cinema, a film shows us the price of love between a young man born in Brussels, of Moroccan origin and a young Belgian woman.
No, absolutely not because the film is shot by two film directors – Taylan Barman and Murad Boucif – both born of immigrant parents themselves.

They know what they’re talking about and how to talk about it, all the more that the actors are non-professionals also born of immigrant families in Brussels’ Moroccan community.

Forty years after Paul Meyer’s masterpiece on Italian immigration in the Borinage mining region of Belgium – “Déja s’envole la fleur maigre” – there is a film about immigrants from the Maghreb today grappling with urban and Western modernity. “Au-delà de Gibraltar” is definitely a historic film in Belgian cinema.

The love story between Karim and Sophie reveal the sacrifices, the hesitations, the stratagems, the patience and the openness that each person must resort to in order to approach the other.

Karim holds up the film from one end to the other. Often undecided and always obstinate, he hangs on to the perspective of love – or rather the perspective of love hangs on to him. Sophie’s sensuality, courage and firmness have nothing to do with lifting him up in moments of doubt when everything falls apart. He is the one who has to make his way through all kinds of traps and obstacles, whether they’re from the community, the family, whether they’re economic or racial…

Karim is not someone who would break up: he loves Sophie and he also loves his father, Ben Amar.

How can he conciliate his love for a woman and the love for his family? How can he get ahead in life with a heartrending new change while respecting values personified in the family tradition?

How can he go on with his search when all around him so many young men give up and fall in the traps? How can he be faithful to himself without betraying his loved ones?

“ Au-delà de Gibraltar” is a “bildungfilm”, like the “bildungromans”, those initiation novels in which the main character unites with the one innumerable conflicts made him become. Through the winding, complex and hectic path of its main character, the film tells the story of a certain Belgium today.

The musicians :

Abdelli : Voice, Acoustic guitar, Mandola
Thierry Van Roy : Guitar e-boy, Keyboards
Said Mohammed Nadjib : ( Asfour) : Ney (Tunisia)
Makrai Lamarti : ( Mjidou) Violin
Azzedine Jazouli : Darbouka, Bendir, Tar
Alshad Jabaroff : Balaban
Jawad Smaili : Nay ( Iran)
Farhat Karimov : Zarb, Nagara
Oktaj : Gosha, Nagara

Music : Abdelli, et Thierry van Roy
Production : Abdelli et Thierry Van Roy
Enregistrement : Bakou ( Azerbaïdjan) et Bruxelles
Published and distributed by : Universal Music

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