Letting the story breathe
Writing The Ogress of Fez has been an exercise in patience, precision, and restraint. It is not a project that allows for rushed thinking or surface-level storytelling. The process itself mirrors the excavation of history, digging through fragments, reconstructing narratives from incomplete records, and allowing fiction to emerge from the silences in the archive.
The brothel in The Ogress of Fez is a space of contradictions; intimate yet impersonal, a site of both refuge and violence. The women who inhabit it exist within a system that exploits them but also, in some cases, allows them a form of agency, however conditional. One of the biggest challenges has been navigating the delicate balance between historical authenticity and narrative fiction. How do I remain true to the realities of colonial prostitution in Morocco without reducing these women to objects of pity or symbols of suffering? How do I tell a story that acknowledges their oppression without stripping them of their complexity, their humour, their defiance?
These questions have weighed on me since the end of the DFI Hezayah Lab in December. Without the external structure of the lab, I’ve had to reorient myself, find my own rhythm, rebuild momentum at my own pace. Losing out on the DFI Development Fund too, due to not meeting the minimum page count, was frustrating, but perhaps it was a necessary setback. There is something to be said for allowing a script to breathe, for resisting the impulse to rush towards completion simply to fit an industry timeline. As a friend, a fellow writer-director, reminded me: sometimes the work needs to evolve privately before it is ready to be seen, before it can withstand external critique.
In the meantime, I have been seeking out voices that can offer deeper insight. I recently connected with Christelle Taraud, whose work on colonial prostitution and gendered spaces in North Africa has been invaluable. Even from a brief exchange based on my pitch deck, her initial thoughts gave me a renewed sense of direction. The loss of funding means I cannot yet afford to bring a consultant on board, but I know that when the time comes, I want to enter that conversation with a script that feels fully realised, something I am proud to put forward, rather than a collection of ideas still finding their shape.
For now, my focus is on carving out time. I have had to make difficult choices about where my energy goes, recognising that I cannot say yes to every opportunity without consequence. I have a busy job, I have a family, and I have this story, this world I am trying to build, piece by piece. Some days, it feels overwhelming. But as my time has freed up, so has my headspace. And that, more than anything, feels like a step forward.