What inspired the story for Nefta Football Club?

There are many things that have inspired the movie. First, it was a personal experience from my childhood. When I was 14, my friend and I would systematically sneak out to forbidden places with torchlights. One day, we found things that we thought to be drug material (twisted spoon, a camping stove and thousand of little plastic bags full of white powder). We decided to take all this on our motorcycle and dump it in the water without really thinking about what we were doing. Our decision may have cost someone’s life or something important. It’s a story I kept for more than 30 years now. This is how it got started. I wanted the movie to take place at the border between Morocco and Algeria because I was amazed by the fantastic landscapes I saw there and imagined that the desert would play a great part in the story. Border zones are often dangerous, it is a no man’s land going from a state to another literally. Regarding the story about the donkey and the walkman, it’s a true story. I found it funny to bring this misunderstanding with the music. For the football field, the idea came to me after I saw all these kids playing football all along my trip, from north to south Morocco. All these little stories stayed somewhere in my mind/head to finally merged in one, The Nefta Club.

Football (soccer) plays a big part in the film. What does the sport mean to you personally?

I don't like the competitive or the financial aspect of soccer, but I wanted it to highlight the connection between the game and its stakes; the spontaneous aspect versus the element of the calculation; the gap between childhood and teenage years symbolized by the two brothers. Mohammed takes a big risk when he tries to make money off of his discovery but he is stopped by his little brother’s innocence, who just wants to keep playing with him like before. The story is completely related to soccer. From the beginning, we are talking about Riyad Mahrez, who is an Algerian football player, and about borders, and we end up on boundaries of the football field done with the pushers' cocaine, who are big football fans too.

What were some of the pains of working with a donkey? Are they as stubborn as they say?

In fact, I made a casting of two donkeys in the film Nefta football Club. The whole team preferred another donkey but I liked the one that was in the film.