Photo: Babel
Jon Alterman: Hana Al Omair is chair of the Saudi Cinema Association. She's a writer and a director, and her series, Whispers, was released on Netflix in 2020. Hana, welcome to Babel.
Hana Al Omair: Thank you, Jon Alterman.
Jon Alterman: You were working as a journalist when you won an award in 2008 for writing a movie script for Hadaf which is about a Saudi girl who dreams of being a professional soccer player. Why did you write a movie script when your country had no theaters?
Hana Al Omair: I always felt that I'm a writer. I've tried several times to write different genres and short stories. I was planning to write a novel at one point, but I always felt that there is another form of creative writing that I would like to explore, until I wrote a screenplay. Once I had written it, I knew this is what I want to write. It was a surprise that it won a prize at that time. I think this was a sign for me to keep going in that direction.
Jon Alterman: How big was the Saudi film industry in 2008?
Hana Al Omair: It was almost nonexistent—except for a few trials here and there of short films. Of course, every seven years or so there will be Saudi film produced, but this was not considered by any means an industry or even a movement or anything.
Jon Alterman: How big is the industry now?
Hana Al Omair: Now it's much, much bigger. This year around eleven feature films have been produced, and by the end of the year, maybe even more.
Jon Alterman: How many are in it and who are they? Can you give a sense of this community?
Hana Al Omair: Well, most of the people who work in the industry right now have been there for a while. For example, Mahmoud Sabbagh already made two films—Barakah Meets Barakah and Amra, and The Second Marriage—and he just finished making his third feature. There are others who are doing their first feature films, and we expect more and more names to come into the industry as it grows with the funding.
Jon Alterman: How many people are there? How many Saudis are involved in making films?
Hana Al Omair: I would say hundreds. I remember talking about the percentage of females when I made my first documentary in 2009. I was the only female on set. Then in 2014, when I made my first short fiction film, Shakwa, it was me and the main actress – the only two females on set. When I was doing Whispers, around 50 percent of the crew were women. On the cast, we had more women than men. The numbers clearly show that things are improving.
Jon Alterman: Who are the figures in your family who were supportive of your exploring this for a career and were there people in your family who had reservations about your pursuing this kind of career?
Hana Al Omair: I've been extremely lucky that my family didn't interfere. At the beginning, they were confused. It seemed so strange that I am making films when there are no cinemas. I was teaching in the university at one point, and then I left and started working as a freelancer. I didn’t have a proper job.
This is all very weird according to social norms, but they have accepted whatever I'm doing. They gave me my own space. Gradually, my mother would watch all my interviews and record them, even sending them to her friends sometimes.
Over time, they have seen that I've been following a path, and there is a career for me now that was not there before. They started to realize and event to tell me that I’ve been right all along.
Jon Alterman: I understand you had a grandfather who also helped shape your direction here.
Hana Al Omair: Yes, my grandfather's a great influence. He was one of the first people who were educated. He actually had a degree as a graduate from India when there were no schools in Saudi Arabia, so he was one of the first teachers in Saudi.
He then opened the first bookstore in the eastern province and books were his life. Every single time he would go to a book fair and buy books, he would come to me with a gift. The gift was always a book, a story. This is where I started to love stories.
Jon Alterman: What kinds of stories are you trying to tell right now? What stories do you think it's important for Saudi filmmakers to tell?
Hana Al Omair: Saudi Arabia has a great heritage full of stories that hasn't been told. Our history and all the changes we have gone through have not been told.
All of this is very inspiring for us as filmmakers to explore. I always love relationships, especially how complicated they are. I love to show things that I would have loved to see on-screen about our women— our men as well. Even men in Saudi had only been portrayed in a very cliché way that is not right.
I've been supported all my life by men. My grandfather, my father, my brother, and my ex-husband have been in many different ways, and so it's not the way that people would think about when it comes to Saudi men.
Jon Alterman: What do you think about taboos? Which taboos do you think are important to portray in film, and which taboos do you think shouldn't be portrayed in film?
Hana Al Omair: Everything can be portrayed as long as you treat the sensitivity of it. A taboo means that it's a sensitive issue, and if you understand the sensitivity and work around it, you can always do whatever you want, and say whatever you want to say, without shocking people.
I don't like to shock people. I do like to work on issues that haven't been tackled or discussed. For example, Saudis have a certain respect for parents, and it's said that they are always right, but they're not. They're human beings, so they make mistakes, sometimes very big mistakes that may be damaging to their children without realizing that they are doing this.
In Shakwa, the father was not a good father at all, and the daughter had to deal with her father. At the end, there was a moment when she realized that this father is now in a very different stage. He is a helpless person, and when he gave her just a nod of appreciation things started to change.
So in a way, it's something that you can consider a very sensitive issue. At the same time, I've seen people greatly affected by it. I believe that you can always say whatever you want to say.
Jon Alterman: I'd be interested in how you think about your audience. You have a domestic audience; you have a regional audience. With Netflix, you have a global audience. Are you trying to address all three of them? Do you think that when you have such a diverse audience, the message can get garbled?
Hana Al Omair: Yes, I think you need to specify a certain audience, and then pray that it will work with the other audiences. It's extremely difficult sometimes, and when we were doing Whispers, we were hoping that Netflix would buy that.
At the time, Netflix didn't have any Saudi original productions and was a bit skeptical about whether it would be the type of story that they want to have. They said we are not interested, but let's see once you start shooting.
So, we were not sure where it was going to be on Netflix, but we just worked on the story. I wanted to stick to the story and be honest to my characters and their world.
Jon Alterman: Can you just describe the plot?
Hana Al Omair: The story begins with someone dying from an accident. The guy’s family who died starts to have strange calls and suspect that the accident wasn’t truly an accident. Every single time we see this story, we see it from a certain perspective. As we go from one episode to the other, we gradually see the whole picture and start to realize who is behind this crime.
Jon Alterman: This is almost the Saudi version of Rashomon.
Hana Al Omair: Yes, I'm a fan of Rashomon. It's one of my favorite films.
Jon Alterman: There's a lot of Saudi government support for filmmaking now. What do you think the government needs to do to support the industry, and what should the government avoid doing so it doesn't distort the industry's development?
Hana Al Omair: The government is doing a lot for the industry, and it's an open discussion. We always have forums through a film commission, with the Ministry of Culture. We've been included in the decision-making, so that whatever is done helps the people who are in the industry.
We have a lot of funds, which is great and something we have needed for a while. Right now, there is the Association of Film—which is different from the Cinema Association. The Film Association is like a guild, so they're working on regulations to make sure that the rights of people in the industry are watched and monitored. We're looking forward to whatever the Association of Film will come up with, and this will make a big difference for everybody who's in the industry.
The funds are really great, but there are still things that need to be done regarding permits for shooting. We are still a new industry, and when you work on film, you need a lot of other services to help the industry. It's not only the industry itself. You need hotels, cars, transportation, catering, and lots of other things. You need people to work with you and people in Saudi are not really acquainted with our industry. We are still trying to include people and educate them about our needs and how we can collaborate. This will take some time, of course, but we're getting there. I don't see anything that is not being thought of.
Jon Alterman: What are your upcoming projects?
Hana Al Omair: I have one project that is so dear to me. I've been working on for quite a few years. It's an adaptation of a Saudi novel, Divers of a Desert, written by a female Saudi novelist Amal Al-Faran. I've been working on it from 2019 until now.
Last year, the movie was on the market at the Red Sea Film Festival. We're planning to actually produce it in 2024.
Jon Alterman: We will look for it. Hana Al Omair, thank you very much for joining us on Babel.
Hana Al Omair: Thank you. Thank you, Jon Alterman.
[END]