Tunisia itself is the subject; we wanted to render the genius of the site. Tunisia is almost the central character of this little film: we see the relation of the city to the sea, the traces that bear witness to its foundation, the remains of Carthage, the symbolism of the recently discovered Medina coin … The splendours of the house interiors and courtyards are associated with a scene of origin, what psychoanalysis calls a primal scene. Entering these houses opens up a world peopled by women: the child’s ‘homecoming’ in the hands of women is staged as an abduction, playing doubly on fascination and terror.

These places were mine, from my childhood, they can be found almost intact – it’s the return of the exile visiting the kingdom. I let Ruiz discover all this, and immediately that led him to echoes and resonances ranging from Spain to Chile.

The initial idea was to re-find, across these childhood places, the forces of fantasy and the marvellous that relate to the ancient archaeology shown at the film’s beginning. These vestiges illuminate our expatriot, exiled, foreign, nomadic present, articulated through a poetic of traversal and dialogue. To give greater presence to this marvellous which introduces magic into the everyday, in the film I recount a brief tale from A Thousand and One Nights – a moral tale, reduced to its essence. My voice-off seems to suddenly invade a dark corridor and animate its shadows, transforming it into Plato’s cave.

In another scene we adapt, via a children’s game, one of the most beautiful texts of the medieval world, by Ramon Lulle. He represents the Spanishness that is influenced by Islam – one of the crossroads where Ruiz and I meet. Spanish Islam is repressed within Hispanic consciousness, and any element which troubles Hispanic culture elicits exaltation from Ruiz, who is South American and part Indian ...