The Emirati cinema industry has grown in leaps and bounds, from dramas to documentaries. Providing further evidence of the diversity of the local scene, the Emirati filmmaker Alwiya A Thani's romcom titled Faith in Love, which premiered at last December's Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), has gone on to earn some impressive international recognition.
The romcom genre, it’s probably fair to say, isn’t always the most critically acclaimed, but Thani has just been awarded a prestigious Gold Award from the Los Angeles-based International Independent Film Awards and says she felt like bucking the trend of serious output with her latest production.
“I just felt like getting away from the drama that we’re kind of used to,” she explains. “It’s just a sweet comedy about friends who are working together and how sometimes when you’re with a colleague you can share feelings but not always realise because you’re occupied with someone else.”
The Dubai-based film reflects the UAE’s multicultural society. The lead character, Paul, and his match-making 14-year-old sister are British. The object of Paul’s affections is his German-Ethiopian assistant. Comic relief comes from the best friend, an Emirati comedian and radio presenter played by the local celebrity DJ Bliss. And the competition in Paul’s quest for romance comes from a French- Iranian counter-suitor. The crew were a multinational bunch, too – the script was adapted from Thani’s original idea by a Somali writer, the director of photography was Italian and the assistants were South African and Australian.
Thani has another surprise in store – she declined to follow the usual romcom template.
“A lot of people when they see a romcom, they know that this guy will end up with the girl, so I wanted to make a twist because in real life you don’t necessarily get what you want and sometimes you have to move on.”
One downside of Thani's international approach is that it may have made it harder to attract funding for the film. She notes that there are certain ideas about genre, language and subject matter that can help decide whether a film qualifies for funding as "Emirati", but her limited budget didn't stop her assembling a crew of around 25 people and getting Filmworks – the local producer for films such as Mission: Impossible IV and Syriana – on board.
Indeed, Thani notes that, to the best of her knowledge, the film was the last production that Tim Smythe, the former head of Filmworks, worked on. Smythe, who was the executive producer, died while the film was in post-production, but the highly polished finished product is certainly a fitting tribute to a man who did so much to develop the local industry and it seems appropriate that his swansong should be helmed by one of the local directors whom Smythe and his company have always done so much to support.
Although Thani concedes that the film is “not really a festival film”, leaning in its genre and subject matter more towards commercial audiences than festival ones, it has already been picked up by the huge Carthage festival, while quite literally within hours of speaking to the director it was selected for screening at the Underground Short Film Festival in Cork, Ireland, this September.
Faith in Love may be Thani's biggest success to date – tickets for its DIFF screenings sold out two days beforehand – but she has honed her skills with two previous films of her own and has worked as a director at Dubai One TV and Abu Dhabi's ultimately doomed Baynounah TV, which produced hundreds of hours of original content, although it never actually made it to air. She now works as a production manager at Image Nation, where she has picked up more experience on the sets of productions such as From A to B and Chance of a Lifetime.
Perhaps unusually, though, Thani’s next priority isn’t to get working on her next project.
Instead, she says, she wants to help other young Emirati artists find their voices: “I’m really focused on helping the UAE industry, and I really want it to grow, so I’m giving all my energy to the young filmmakers. I want them to come to me because if they’re capable, I have things I can give them-and I will. I’d love to be able to give a project to every filmmaker that comes to me and asks.”
Thani probably won’t be off our radars for too long, though. “That said, by the end of this year or early next I’ll be directing a new project,” she says. “I’d love a feature, but whether it’s a feature or a short, yes, I’m planning to.”
cnewbould@thenational.ae