Writer/Director Yasir Al-Yasiri and Actress Nour Alkhadra talk to Fest Track about characterization, intent, structure and creating new Saudi entertainment in regards to their movie: "HWJN", the opening night film of the 2023 Red Sea Internation Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 This is Tim Walsh from Fast Track On Circuit TV.
00:28 I'm here in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for the Red Sea International Film Festival.
00:32 [MUSIC]
00:42 >> Actually, it was like from the first moment I've read the novel itself,
00:53 I felt there are three elements in the novel that I need really to keep.
00:58 Within the movie, which is the love story and then the human being,
01:03 the others, not the other way around.
01:05 And then the self discovery journey of Hawjan.
01:09 And usually with writing, we go with the three act structure.
01:17 This is the usual writing method we use for most of the movies.
01:21 But there is the other way to write, which is the chapters.
01:26 When you have three chapters, and each chapter has a beginning, and
01:29 a middle, and an end.
01:30 And I chose Hawjan to go to this path to balance all these three main factors.
01:37 And from writing script, I knew that it's a challenge to balance all that.
01:46 And really to keep the pace, because I didn't want to fall into
01:53 having long or slow pace in certain areas, and then like a rushed one in others.
02:00 So yeah, it was a challenge really, but it was really thought through.
02:06 And I made a plan on how to balance it.
02:08 [MUSIC]
02:17 [FOREIGN]
02:27 >> She is a very strong, resilient character, that's for sure.
02:33 Like imagine, like she's falling in love with somebody she's never even seen.
02:37 Like, and he is from another universe even, you know?
02:42 So like, I would say she has a lot of dimensions.
02:48 At the same time, she's very kind, and she's also very like,
02:54 she doesn't want to like burden her parents with her bad news,
03:00 to not ruin the film.
03:01 So yeah, she definitely has a lot of different aspects about her.
03:08 And I really felt like she was, yeah, she was definitely strong.
03:16 [FOREIGN]
03:26 >> Yeah, the novel, the reader is the director.
03:36 He can imagine whatever.
03:38 And what's an addition challenge to it is actually in our culture and
03:45 religion, jinn exists, okay?
03:49 But there is no visual reference to it because we cannot see them.
03:52 So there is no shared visual reference between two, now you found two Arabs.
03:57 They don't share the same understanding about jinn.
04:01 And now it's on me to bring a visual reference to this entire world and
04:06 to present it to people, yet keeping it relatable for them.
04:11 So when they see it, they said, okay, it's close to what I had in mind.
04:15 And it was very challenging, so I took it on my part to,
04:19 I made a rule book that I started really from the beginning of the jinn world,
04:25 from the early beginning, and how they evolved.
04:29 Because they coexist with us.
04:30 It doesn't mean they still live in the medieval ages.
04:33 They have their own evolution.
04:36 They have own food.
04:38 They have own industry, own textiles, plants, and ever.
04:42 And I made this all come into a rule book that I wrote and
04:47 then I gave to all the cast and crew members.
04:51 I said, even though 90% of this book won't make it to the movie, it was there.
04:55 But I want everything that comes in the movie feels really connected
05:00 to a backstory that really fuel what we are seeing in the movie on
05:05 the image we are discussing.
05:07 [FOREIGN]
05:17 [MUSIC]
05:27 >> She's very much, I mean, it's a fantasy film and
05:40 she's very much into her head as well.
05:43 Like to be curious maybe is the right word for her because she's like,
05:50 she doesn't mind exploring in her own little world.
05:56 And yeah, and that brings her joy, like living in the fantasy in her head.
06:01 Whether it's in her head or not, we don't know.
06:05 But I think we could all relate to that in some way.
06:11 It's kind of like a child, it stems from the child in us, in a way.
06:18 >> What initiated the whole journey of
06:24 Howjan was curiosity, and curiosity of
06:29 challenging the taboos and the forbiddance, and then to see the outcome from it.
06:35 Sometimes it will eventually lead to what everyone says,
06:40 it will lead to, but it will change a lot in the process.
06:44 It will change us as people and Howjan as Jin,
06:49 because it was a self discovery journey that led by his curiosity.
06:55 He wanted to know more, and although it was forbidden,
06:59 although it's a taboo, but he wanted to know more.
07:02 He ended up, I don't want to spoil much, but he ended up doing some stuff,
07:07 but then at the end, with the process, he discovered himself.
07:11 And I think this is a very universal theme.
07:15 You can find it in every human driven by curiosity,
07:21 because without curiosity, we wouldn't have science, we wouldn't discover anything,
07:25 and we wouldn't evolve to what we are today.
07:28 So yeah, curiosity is the driving force behind the movie and
07:33 the story that I built, and I think it's behind everything in the world.
07:35 [FOREIGN]
07:45 >> It's incredible to have this film set here in my home country,
07:59 in my home city, and have it open like the Red Sea Film Festival
08:05 in the city, it's really so beautiful.
08:09 I never did I think that, first of all, I'd be an actress.
08:13 Second of all, be doing a film in Saudi, in my home country, in my own city.
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08:21 [FOREIGN]
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