Lessons in monochrome
The Girl with the Needle (2023)
In my ongoing research for The Ogress of Fez, I recently watched two films that reinforced my belief in black and white as an essential choice for the film’s visual language: The Girl with the Needle (2023), directed by Magnus von Horn, and Twilight (1990, Szürkület), directed by György Fehér. Both films exemplify the expressive and atmospheric potential of monochrome cinematography, something I have long been drawn to but which has met its fair share of pushback during the development of The Ogress of Fez.
When I first proposed black and white for The Ogress of Fez, some saw it as a purely stylistic decision, one that might be aesthetically pleasing but unnecessary. There was concern about limiting the film’s marketability, as if black and white were a gimmick rather than a fundamental storytelling tool. And yet, there were those who understood. My mentor Raja Amari during the DFI Hezayah lab immediately grasped the significance of the choice. So did my producer Arij Al Soltan, who recognised how fundamentally it ties into the film’s themes. For me, the black and white aesthetic is both about evoking a historical aesthetic and about embodying a visual and emotional truth.
The Visual Thread
Black and white in The Ogress of Fez is not a retro affectation, nor is it about nostalgia. It is a thread that connects past and present, a visual bridge between the colonial postcards that documented the Bousbir quarter and the living, breathing world I am reconstructing. The absence of colour paradoxically sharpens the focus on texture, light and shadow, elements that are crucial to a story steeped in secrecy, memory and the fragmentation of historical narratives.
The Girl with the Needle and Twilight
Watching The Girl with the Needle was a revelation. The way it uses black and white to highlight the brutality of its world while simultaneously allowing for moments of beauty felt incredibly close to what I want to achieve with The Ogress of Fez. The interplay of light and darkness, the way faces emerge from and disappear into shadows, created a heightened reality, a world where morality and survival are constantly shifting. The tactile quality of the imagery, almost as if one could reach out and feel the rough wool of a coat, the dampness of an alleyway, the cold steel of a needle, was all there, heightened by the monochrome.
The Girl with the Needle (2023)
And then there was Twilight, an unexpected discovery. Fehér’s approach to black and white is uncompromising, deep inky blacks and sharp whites creating a world that feels suspended in time. The film exists in a space between dream and nightmare, a liminal zone where certainty is elusive. The way the film lingers in the shadows, allowing silence and ambiguity to take hold, resonates with the tonal qualities I want to bring to The Ogress of Fez. There is something about black and white that makes stillness more haunting, that turns hesitation into something weighty, almost oppressive. It strips away distractions, leaving only the essential.
Twilight (1990)
Overlapping Themes
Both films share thematic overlaps with The Ogress of Fez. The Girl with the Needle and Twilight both navigate spaces of moral ambiguity, where characters operate in societies that have already sealed their fates. In Twilight, the protagonist is caught in an investigation that leads nowhere, his movements are futile against an opaque system. In The Girl with the Needle, survival is contingent on difficult, often brutal choices. The Ogress of Fez also exists in a world where fate seems preordained, where the weight of history bears down on the characters. Beyond an aesthetic, black and white in each of these films becomes medium through which their trapped, liminal existence is rendered.
Twilight (1990)
The Right Kind of Black and White
One of the biggest misconceptions about black and white cinematography is that it is all the same. But just as colour cinematography requires careful consideration of palettes, contrasts and saturation, black and white demands its own carefully considered approach. Not all black and white is created equal. Twilight is grainy and high contrast, reminiscent of Bela Tarr’s work. The Girl with the Needle is softer, more poetic yet unflinching in its details. For The Ogress of Fez, the approach must be deliberate, textured, rich, embracing the interplay of light and shadow while preserving the grit and tactility of the world we are depicting.
Defending the Choice
As I continue developing The Ogress of Fez, these films reaffirm my conviction in the choice of black and white. I am not so concerned with making the film look artistic or distancing it from reality. Quite the opposite. My goal here is to immerse the audience in a world that feels elemental and unshakable, a world where history is always in the frame, where the past is never truly past. Raja Amari and Arij Al Soltan saw it and I am grateful for their support. The challenge now is to bring this vision to life in a way that silences the doubts and makes it undeniable. Black and white is not a limitation but an expansion of what cinema can do.