Al Eid Eiden: Meet the four Emirati women who made the Yas Island comedy happen

For filmmaking team Maitha Alawadi, Sara Al Sayegh, Meera AlMidfa and Rawia Abdullah, the family flick is a subtle step forward for UAE cinema

For many Emiratis who grew up in the 1990s, their dreams were born at the movies.

Writer Sara Al Sayegh hoped to one day go to New York to stay at the Plaza hotel, just like Kevin McCallister in Home Alone 2. Actress Meera AlMidfa yearned to be a Disney princess, like Jasmine in Aladdin. Director Maitha Alawadi, meanwhile, wanted to make a movie of her own, thinking Hollywood was the only place she could do it.

That’s precisely what’s driven the three, together with producer Rawia Abdullah, to make Al Eid Eiden. The family comedy, currently in UAE cinemas, is set on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island, but it’s more meaningful to each of them than its light premise may suggest.

Hollywood once set their dreams in the West. Now, by making the kind of movie that they loved growing up, set in their own backyard, they hope to inspire the next generation of Emiratis to see the potential right in front of them – a potential they now finally see for themselves.

Alawadi, who makes her feature directorial debut with the film, tells The National: “I really needed a film like this in my childhood because I’ve struggled with my identity my whole life.

“I was looking at different languages and different traditions – why couldn’t I relate to my own culture the same way?”

The crux of the issue is clear for Alawadi as it is for her creative partners – without proper representation on screen, it’s hard to forge an outward sense of one’s own culture.

Al Sayegh says: “This movie is not just intended to tell people abroad who we are, it’s to tell our own community and those living among it what our culture is – how we laugh, how we cry, how we celebrate.

“The only way we are going to change perceptions of who we are is to truly show who we are. We need to empower ourselves and our voices, tell our stories ourselves and not let anybody else be in charge of telling our story.”

The premise of Al Eid Eiden is simple: a Saudi husband and Emirati wife take their three children on a trip to Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, over the Eid holiday. As is the case with many family holidays, next to nothing goes to plan.

"As a kid, I wanted to go to the Plaza in New York because of Home Alone," says Al Sayegh. "That's why I wanted to showcase Abu Dhabi in the same way. We have such special places here that I thought would be beautiful to showcase on screen. Getting the chance to do that has been a dream come true."

As the film goes on, what starts as a slapstick comedy of manners becomes something more heartfelt than the premise may suggest.

“It was inspired by my own family,” says Al Sayegh. “My father is Emirati and my mother is originally from Qatar. Every second day of Eid growing up, we would go to Doha to visit my mum’s family. While our lives may have not been as chaotic as the movie, a lot of these situations and fights are verbatim what happened between me and my siblings.”

In tackling the script, Al Sayegh strived to make the film reflect her own mixed-Gulf culture family. But authenticity comes with its own problems. Real people, after all, are full of flaws, something that audiences accept more of each other than they accept of characters on screen.

To play Maha, the Emirati mother who leads the film, they needed an actress who could portray motherhood differently than Arab films traditionally have, while maintaining an innate likability to overcome the character's many flaws – something they struggled to find until they auditioned AlMidfa.

AlMidfa says: “I just thought of the mothers that I know. When we were kids, we would think our mothers were strict and harsh, but when we grew up, we realised that it all came from love – it came from pure intentions. So to play her, I had to make all of her flaws seem human so that her good intentions would shine through.”

But it wasn’t only Emirati women that the filmmaking team was intent on portraying more realistically than they’d seen in the past – it was Emirati men, too.

“In the film, Maha has a very close relationship with her father, and that’s something we haven’t really seen portrayed on screen,” says Al Sayegh. "In our culture, girls are very connected to their fathers.

“There’s this perception that Emirati fathers are always working and not with the kids, but that’s completely the opposite of what I’ve seen in my circles. We have such wonderful fathers in the region and we wanted to highlight and appreciate the men in our lives – amazing dads and supportive husbands.”

Similarly, they were intent on breaking stereotypes of husband-and-wife dynamics, especially those often found in comedy.

Alawadi says: “In the past, there were stricter roles in society, but we’ve changed with the times. Our generation is more loving, more supportive, more balanced and open to listening to each other. Our lead male actors, Fahad Albutairi and Hassan Rajab Alhammadi, did a wonderful job of conveying that.”

Alawadi credits the film’s producer, Abdullah, with finding Alhammadi, a veteran of the UAE’s theatre scene.

“We had another actor set for the role, but Hassan Rajab was exactly the type of Emirati man we were looking for as a man – you can tell just by looking at his Instagram,” Abdullah says with a laugh.

At times on set, the film and their own lives blurred beyond recognition.

AlMidfa says: “There’s one scene where Maha video calls her father when she’s still in Saudi Arabia, and we were filming right before we broke for lunch. I felt like I wasn’t really connecting the first few takes. So I took a break, and I video-called my real dad. And it really helped me get my emotions back up to the surface.”

Al Sayegh hopes that telling an authentic, accessible story on an intimate scale helps forge a new template for Emirati cinema, which is still in the process of forging a clear identity for both a local and global audience.

“There’s often this obsession with trying to write something fantastical or outside our world, but we haven’t told our stories yet," she says. "People don’t know who we are – they don’t know people like me, Meera, Rawia or Maitha.

“I want people around the world to know who we are in Abu Dhabi as people. Our country's achievements are great and speak for themselves, but I want people to watch our movie and feel like they hung out with an Emirati – like they went on holiday with us. This is a simple story – but starting smaller, I think, is better.”

And for each of them, going through the process of making the film, of thinking deeply about what it means to be Emirati in an everyday setting, and leaning on fellow Emirati women each day to figure out how to bring it to life, has helped solidify their own identity, and made them prouder than ever to be from the UAE.

“That’s the beauty of this film,” Alawadi explains. “I found my identity through it. I explored it and I fell in love with it – and I want to tell more of our stories because of it.

“This is a love story of giving back to a country that gave so much to us. The only way to give back to the community that’s been supporting us is to tell their stories, both for ourselves and the world.”

Al Eid Eiden is screening in cinemas now