When they get together for dinners, brunches and coffee, six creative young women who live in Sharjah and Dubai can usually be found engaged in ceaseless chatter. But it’s not the latest gossip that dominates their get-togethers – it’s the plot lines for their next film.
Over just such a get-together the first Emirati superheroine, Hessa, was born, and the idea for their six-minute short, Super Lochal, began to take form. This week, Super Lochal is competing at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival (ADFF) as part of the Emirates Film Competition (EFC) alongside work from more than 50 filmmakers from the GCC.
Whether it will win remains to be seen, but it certainly stands out from the competition. For a start, it blends live action with still images and original animation – a combination rarely found in films from the region. Perhaps even more noteworthy – it is the pet project of a group of six women of different backgrounds and nationalities, whose lives just happened to converge in the UAE. The one characteristic that they agree is a common denominator for all six of them? “We’ve all experienced a bit of female oppression,” says Sarah Zohair. “So we created this female superhero character that all of us would secretly like to be.”
Zohair and her friends – Sarah Alagroobi, Mahya Soltani, Majida Al Safadi, Maram Ashour and Omnia El Afifi – dug deep into their own experiences of living and growing up as women in the UAE to create the story of Hessa, a young Emirati girl who happens to have superpowers that she uses to help the weak and oppressed in her attempts to right the injustices faced by young women like herself.
They describe the story as a “dark comedy”, and all six of them stress that it is a lighthearted take on a serious subject – one that is close to all their hearts.
The women met five years ago at a film course while they were students of the College of Architecture, Arts and Design at the American University of Sharjah, and have been working together to cultivate their passion for filmmaking ever since.
“We are familiar with one another’s skills, what our strengths and weaknesses are, and we’ve worked on film projects together before,” says Soltani. “We knew we wanted to address women’s issues. We are six women, it just felt natural. We all live in this region and know what it’s like for women here – we wanted something personal to all of us that we’ve experienced.”
Alagroobi, the only Emirati in the group, was collectively chosen to portray Hessa, a character she describes as the “catalyst” they created to spark a “sort of dialogue about social issues that exist in Emirati society”.
“It’s a take on something that’s actually more specific to the Arab region than just the UAE – this is the society we live in today, where there is a lack of female empowerment,” she says. “Women don’t always have the voice to speak up for what they believe in and these issues come up in our film in a humorous way.”
In fact, Lochal is the word “local” but pronounced in a Khaleeji accent, because, as Alagroobi put it, “we’re trying to be quirky, funny”.
Ashour says the main themes of Super Lochal, which screens as a part of the Emirates Film Competition's Short Narrative Competition tonight and on Wednesday, are obvious: gender equality, social pressure and freedom of speech.
“These are messages that we all wanted to touch upon,” she says. “I think this comes from us growing up in a similar society where these things were and are still an issue, and we feel very strongly about addressing them and being vocal about these problems.”
Over an intense weekend, Super Lochal began to take shape. The film came together in 72 hours during which the women barely ate and rarely slept.
“Actually, five of us ended up in the hospital from exhaustion, dehydration and lack of sleep,” says Alagroobi. “We just put our entire selves into the film, all our passion and love over one weekend and couldn’t stop until it was a tangible thing that we knew was really going to happen.”
El Afifi believes that the film’s messages will strike a chord with viewers. “We touch on curfews – we have curfews as grown women – and how men are always hitting on women, disrespectfully. People will relate,” she says.
The women are barely able to contain their excitement and pride of being chosen to take part in ADFF, and the anticipation at finally showing their project to the world.
“We’re so excited to see if other women, and everyone in the UAE, really understands what we’re trying to say in the film, and if they feel the experiences of Hessa are familiar to them,” says Soltani. “We showed it to some of our friends and so many were like, ‘Oh my God! Oh my God! Yes, exactly, totally!’”
Al Safadi says all the women agree that the one thing they are most excited for is to see people’s reactions when the film appears on the big screen.
“Winning would be great, sure, but we just want people to see our film,” she says.
Ashour credits Super Lochal for giving them a voice as young women of the region.
“We aren’t always heard, and this film helps us do that, with of course an added light-heartedness to it,” she says. “We also have seen that the film industry itself is much harder for females to succeed in, and the fact that six women were able to make a film like this that is premiering in the Abu Dhabi Film Festival makes us extremely proud.”
“Being an all-girl team was pretty awesome,” says Al Safadi.
El Afifi agrees: “We have a bond; some of us are filmmakers, some are designers, some are animators and we all love making films. Which is great, because six brains on the same wavelength are better than one.”
Together, the women are a complete film-production team, moving seamlessly between brainstorming and scriptwriting, to filming and directing, all the way to editing and producing a film, and ready to contribute to graphic design, animation and art direction wherever needed.
“We have great team dynamics,” says Zohair. Ashour agrees: “We have a variety of talents. Together, we can make something great.”
“I totally see us working together again,” says Soltani. “Maybe once we’re done with ADFF, we might come up with a new idea together and start a new project. It can happen any time, over dinner or an outing. It’s all we talk about.”
You can see Super Lochal and other films competing in the EFC’s Short Narrative Competition at Vox Cinemas at Marina Mall on Sunday, October 26, at 9pm and on Wednesday, October 29, at 3pm.