In this THR festival roundtable, recorded during the Red Sea International Film Festival, Baz Luhrmann, Ali Alkalthami, Kaouther Ben Hania, Asmae El Moudir, Amjad Al Rasheed and Amanda Nell Eu discus filmmaking, storytelling, and art in turbulent times.
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00:00 - Sound, rolling.
00:01 - Standing by, and let's center up, and action.
00:06 - Hello and welcome everybody to the Hollywood Reporter's
00:09 first ever round table at the Red Sea International Film
00:12 Festival here in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, sponsored by Neom.
00:16 We have six great filmmakers here coming together
00:19 despite a very, very busy festival schedule.
00:21 I want to welcome over here Ali Al-Khaldami,
00:26 the hometown hero so to speak, here from Saudi Arabia.
00:28 He has his movie, Mandub, in the competition, welcome.
00:32 I also want to welcome Kautab and Haniye from Tunisia.
00:36 Four Daughters is her movie that you can see
00:39 here at the festival.
00:40 To my right, Baz Luhrmann, young up and coming filmmaker
00:45 you might hear more about, he's the jury president here
00:48 at the Red Sea Festival.
00:50 To my left, we have somebody who just won
00:52 the Marrakesh Award at the festival,
00:55 in case you have not heard.
00:57 Esme El-Mudeir from Morocco, The Mother of All Lies
01:00 is a film that you can also see here.
01:03 We also have with us Amjad Al-Rashid from Jordan,
01:07 Inshallah A Boy, his movie can be seen here.
01:10 And last but certainly not least, Amanda Nell Yu
01:13 from Malaysia, Tiger Stripes is her competition entry.
01:17 So we basically cover the world here.
01:20 I wanted to ask, one of the things that I always find
01:25 interesting is all these people come together
01:28 here at this film festival, everybody has a different voice,
01:31 everybody has a different experience.
01:33 Can you maybe share with us how you first knew
01:35 that you wanted to make movies
01:36 and why you felt that calling so strongly?
01:39 - I think it's a long journey for all of us,
01:42 especially for me because when I was young,
01:44 I thought that I want to write novels.
01:47 I love literature and I was raised with books
01:51 reading all the time.
01:52 So for me, in my surrounding family,
01:55 there was nobody working on cinema.
01:57 So it's like something for other people, not for us.
02:01 So for me, it was writing and storytelling
02:04 and little by little, I discovered that I don't have
02:07 a good style in writing.
02:09 (laughing)
02:10 It's too complicated for me,
02:12 but I love writing and the imagination.
02:16 So when I discovered amateur cinema in Tunis,
02:18 it was like a revelation for me.
02:20 This is something I want to do.
02:21 So I love writing and now I love writing with images.
02:25 This is mainly the journey.
02:27 - Wonderful.
02:28 - Well, very close.
02:31 It started when I was 10 years old and my mother asked me--
02:36 - So five years ago?
02:37 - Five years ago.
02:38 (laughing)
02:39 My mother asked me, you know, parents always ask their kids,
02:43 what do you want to be when you grow up?
02:45 So I was like, I want to be a director,
02:47 which is funny, at that age,
02:49 I didn't know what director means,
02:51 but I knew that I want to tell stories.
02:54 We used to watch black and white movies
02:58 for Faten Hamama and Omar Sharif,
03:00 Egyptian movies.
03:02 - Yeah.
03:03 - These things, like I want this word,
03:05 this is what I want to do, to tell stories.
03:09 And maybe because sometimes I feel when I was kid,
03:12 people are not listening to me.
03:14 So I felt the urge of, I want to communicate with people
03:19 and to communicate visually with them.
03:23 I start like following my dream, basically,
03:29 and today I'm here.
03:31 - Speaking of dreams, winning an award at Marrakech,
03:34 congratulations.
03:35 - Yeah, it was a dream.
03:36 (laughing)
03:37 It was really a dream.
03:38 (applauding)
03:39 When I was 10, I was watching the ceremony of closing
03:42 and the TV, 'cause it's always in there.
03:46 And then I go always in the table
03:49 and I told my father to give me the tea, like a winner.
03:54 And it was the same thing for me.
03:56 After 15 years, I just got the first Etoile d'Or from Morocco.
04:01 So Moroccan were crazy that day, so it was really nice.
04:05 And also I went cultural,
04:06 because telling stories is a necessity.
04:09 Became a filmmaker, it's not a job.
04:11 I mean, we want to tell something from inside
04:16 and then we need form.
04:18 I try to draw, but I cannot even draw apple.
04:23 So writing with a light is better, yeah.
04:26 - It's great.
04:28 - Kind of different than Saudi,
04:31 'cause I guess we didn't have cinema,
04:33 so the aspiration to be a filmmaker wasn't in the mindset.
04:37 But stories always gravitated me.
04:40 I guess my father used to be the storyteller of the story.
04:45 Storyteller of the tribe.
04:47 So I always look at him when he's sitting
04:49 with 50 men around a majlis, which is where you sit,
04:54 and he would tell stories that is entertaining
04:56 and I would just listen to him.
04:58 And the whole culture in Saudi is revolved around stories.
05:02 Technically came in using the camera to tell a story,
05:07 and that's kind of later on stage of my life
05:10 and the internet came, so I delve into,
05:13 okay, translating that oral culture to how to do it right,
05:17 how to, and how to take from the West experience.
05:21 So it is there, but trying to experiment
05:23 with mixing the two, mixing that tradition of stories
05:28 in Saudi and with the techniques of cinema.
05:31 So that's kind of like how I began.
05:34 - I think for me, it was really genre cinema.
05:39 It was horror films.
05:40 - Wow.
05:41 - Yeah, when I was a young kid,
05:43 I remember going to sleepovers with my friends
05:46 and forcing them to video record Texas Chainsaw Massacre
05:50 at 1 a.m. and then the parents would find out
05:53 and they're like, "You can't watch this."
05:54 I'm like, "Why not?
05:55 "I love this."
05:57 So it started there and of course,
05:59 being an Asian person, this is not a thing you do,
06:03 directing, and so I went to do graphic design
06:05 for my degree 'cause I always loved working in visuals.
06:09 But to this day, I still don't know how to use Photoshop
06:12 'cause I was just making short films, animations,
06:15 like music videos, and so I was like,
06:17 "Okay, I have to do this."
06:19 So yeah, that was how it started.
06:21 - Nice.
06:22 Tell us a little bit about what's important
06:24 about the movie you brought to the festival
06:26 and what does it say about,
06:28 how does it exemplify your storytelling voice?
06:32 How does it encapsulate what you're doing
06:36 and what you like to do?
06:37 - Yes, bringing films to the festivals,
06:40 for me, it's like looking for audiences.
06:43 When we change festival, we change the audience.
06:46 Carlo Vivari is not Toronto.
06:50 Toronto, it's gonna not be Ritzy.
06:53 Ritzy is not Marrakesh.
06:54 And then it's very important
06:56 that you just listen to the audience.
06:58 We make film for the audience, I think.
07:02 - That sounds good.
07:03 - Yeah, I think I totally agree.
07:05 It's been such a nice year to travel with the film,
07:09 to do Q&As, to talk to the audience
07:10 from so many parts of the world,
07:13 from US to Europe, and then also Southeast Asia,
07:17 and to see the themes that I'm talking about.
07:20 It's a very Malaysian film,
07:22 and I know when I show it in Southeast Asia,
07:24 the Southeast Asians are like, "Oh, we get it.
07:26 "We see this."
07:27 But also to show it in somewhere like Norway,
07:30 or even Cannes, and people are like,
07:32 "I can relate to this character
07:34 "who is a young girl from Malaysia
07:36 "climbing trees and stuff."
07:37 It's amazing that they can relate to it.
07:40 So I think that's been really special.
07:41 - What are some of the universal themes
07:43 that you think people connect with there?
07:44 - Yeah, I mean, for Tiger Stripes,
07:47 it's really about, it's for people who felt like
07:50 they had to live up to society's expectations,
07:53 or they felt like they were ashamed of their full selves.
07:56 And it's to kind of push and fight for that,
07:58 and to be proud of who you are,
08:01 and stand tall like a tiger.
08:02 (laughs)
08:03 - Sounds nice.
08:04 - Maldub is, I guess Maldub was very necessary
08:10 'cause it talks about the present,
08:12 the present of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh more specifically,
08:16 'cause I lived in Riyadh, the city, for 40 years,
08:20 and tell the story about this loner,
08:22 this guy who delivers food around the city
08:25 and get access to houses and people without being noticed.
08:30 But at the same time, I want to do it as a thriller,
08:33 you know, and genre piece, and he drives at night,
08:37 and his lack of sleep and all of that.
08:39 But at the same time, I think it's the marginalized
08:43 character who is like in the center
08:45 of the attention of the film.
08:46 I wanted to do that, I guess.
08:49 We live in this vast world of communication,
08:52 but loneliness is still there, you know what I mean?
08:55 So I wanted to shine light on that subject matter.
08:59 So kind of that connects with people, I'm hoping,
09:03 at least in Saudi and Riyadh.
09:05 - That sounds amazing. - Yeah.
09:07 - Well, for "Inshallah, I Voy," it's a social thriller
09:11 that it's exploring some human rights,
09:16 if I can say that, because it's talking about
09:22 the specific laws in Jordan and in the Middle East
09:25 and in the Arab world that some women might face,
09:32 and will make some troubles for them
09:37 to have their own rights, like a home,
09:42 or raising their own children,
09:46 and in a society that will ask women to have a boy
09:51 in order for these laws to be different,
09:58 to change all the laws upside down.
10:01 So yes, I'm talking about very specific law
10:05 in my country, maybe, but I was also trying to echo it
10:10 around, to have an echo around the world.
10:15 And I noticed that when I was, again, in Cannes,
10:21 in Toronto, in Karl Rovebari,
10:23 and wherever I screened the film,
10:27 I felt like the connection, especially from women,
10:31 in the West and around the world,
10:33 that they feel the character and they feel the struggle,
10:39 but they also can reflect their own struggles in it.
10:43 And this is very important for me,
10:44 that it's not only about our area,
10:48 it's about women rights around the world.
10:51 I feel like we still, like in the West, for example,
10:56 women doesn't have the same salary like men, for example.
11:01 What I want to say that I believe none of us is free
11:06 until we are all free.
11:08 If a woman is struggling in the Middle East
11:13 and there is an illusion of freedom in the West
11:18 for women, until we are all free, nothing will change.
11:26 - The stories of women, Kauta,
11:28 something that you obviously have experienced--
11:31 - I did a movie called "The Men Who Sold Their Skins."
11:34 (audience laughing)
11:35 Everybody, I'm doing all my movies about them,
11:39 which is true, but I have--
11:40 - One man.
11:42 - One man and all my women.
11:44 - Thanks, darling.
11:46 - Thank you.
11:46 So about my last movie, "For Daughters,"
11:51 it's a documentary.
11:53 I did it, I worked on it for five years.
11:58 And I was thinking it's a small documentary
12:03 and then it went to Cannes in the main competition.
12:07 And we all know that Cannes, they don't like documentaries.
12:10 (audience laughing)
12:11 They love--
12:12 - You have experience like this?
12:13 - Yeah, yeah.
12:14 - Yeah?
12:15 - So it's like, and especially in the main competition,
12:18 because the last movie, I think, was "Far Night 9/11"
12:21 of Michael Moore.
12:22 - Oh.
12:23 - So this year, we took two documentaries.
12:25 I said, yes, finally.
12:27 - Progress.
12:28 - It's the revenge of reality.
12:29 (laughing)
12:31 So yeah, it was amazing.
12:33 And the story, as you said, it's a woman's story.
12:36 It's four daughters and their mother.
12:39 And in the movie, the real character,
12:43 since it's a documentary, are directing actors
12:47 to summon their past, to understand it
12:49 in almost a Brestian theater.
12:52 So it's a very, how to say,
12:56 multi-layered device.
13:00 And I was worried that nobody will understand.
13:03 It's too complicated, you know?
13:06 Because you have actors playing absent daughters
13:09 and the real daughters, and you have the mother,
13:11 and you have another actor playing the mother
13:14 when it's hard for her to.
13:16 So it's like, I was like, nobody will understand this movie.
13:19 And now I'm realizing, like all of you guys,
13:22 that I have the same feedbacks
13:27 in Los Angeles, in Jakarta, as you say.
13:31 In Tunis, here in Saudi Arabia.
13:33 Yesterday, we had the premiere here.
13:35 So it's amazing.
13:36 I mean, this is why we all love cinema,
13:40 because it's beyond culture, beyond.
13:44 It can be about something very, how to say,
13:47 in a small village or a small family.
13:50 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
13:51 - But it's, and there's another level,
13:55 I mean, why we love cinema, especially me,
13:58 because we feel empathy.
14:02 And I think in our world today, we need a lot of empathy,
14:05 because we live in such a cruel world.
14:08 The word empathy, we have selective empathy,
14:11 we have, so that's why telling stories is so important.
14:16 And propaganda, understand it.
14:18 That's why I think that every movie is important.
14:21 I don't know who said that every movie
14:23 is your own propaganda, and I believe in it,
14:26 because it translates your point of view.
14:28 So that's why all our propagandas added together
14:33 can give us a wider vision.
14:36 - Yeah.
14:37 (group laughing)
14:41 - There's so many great stories to tell here in the region.
14:45 And I thought before the festival,
14:48 oh, I wonder if some people might not travel to the region
14:50 because of the conflict in another part
14:53 of the Middle East going on.
14:54 And then you were one of the people who said,
14:57 I made a conscious decision to come.
14:59 Tell us a little bit about what your thought process was
15:02 and why you felt it was important to come at this time.
15:05 - I think it's been said much more eloquently,
15:09 much more to the point than I can say it just then,
15:13 which is in a cruel world,
15:16 in a world of selective empathy,
15:22 that the most important thing
15:23 is to double down on storytelling.
15:25 Because even if, and you've all mentioned,
15:28 and I think this was a beautiful thing to hear,
15:31 your desire to tell stories,
15:32 'cause film is just one way of doing it.
15:35 It can be theater, it can be,
15:37 you tried novel writing, it can be graphic work.
15:40 But it came from childhood.
15:44 It came from something in your childhood
15:46 where you just had to get it out.
15:48 And as you refer to it as your own personal propaganda,
15:50 your own personal point of view.
15:53 So I thought, just like it's been articulated at the table,
15:58 more than ever, it's not voices.
16:01 I mean, where politics and mechanical solutions fail us,
16:08 more than ever, the storytelling humanizes.
16:13 It brings empathy.
16:15 Because you can talk about a situation,
16:18 you can talk about it politically,
16:20 you can go this and that.
16:22 - Or a statistic, which is worse.
16:25 - Yes, worse.
16:27 But when you see, and I've seen some of the movies
16:30 that some of you have made,
16:31 and I have not seen some of the movies,
16:33 but I'm looking forward to them.
16:35 But absolutely, they're human beings.
16:38 And it doesn't matter whether it's Jordan or Casablanca,
16:43 or, you know, the Daughters one,
16:46 I'm fascinated by the way that you've mixed.
16:49 And I hear what you say about documentaries,
16:51 but in the end, I watch movies from 12 o'clock at day
16:56 to 12 o'clock at night.
16:57 I've been doing that every single day.
16:59 Today I have four movies to watch.
17:01 I've never done it before.
17:03 But I haven't seen a movie that I haven't had
17:06 an emotional response to the humanity, the people.
17:10 They're people.
17:11 And it doesn't matter who they are and where they're from.
17:13 And that is so much more powerful
17:15 than people getting around a table
17:16 and yelling at each other, you know,
17:18 with some political agenda.
17:19 - Oh yes, oh yes.
17:20 - So I thought it was,
17:22 I thought it was just not just important to do.
17:27 I didn't think there was a choice to back out
17:31 because I thought, if not now, when, you know?
17:35 - Yeah.
17:36 - Especially what's happening now in the Middle East.
17:39 I mean, and all the coverage over it,
17:43 it's more of a necessary for filmmakers
17:46 to actually present more stories
17:47 and tell their own voice and own narrative.
17:50 'Cause you feel things are just misconstrued
17:52 or like misrepresented.
17:54 And it's your authentic voice that is important now.
17:57 - And by the way, where is the storytelling?
18:00 - Not the storytelling.
18:01 Because there's a word that goes,
18:03 you call media or the news.
18:06 There's a worldwide web, there's clickbait,
18:08 there's la la la la la la la la.
18:10 And to a certain degree, that is storytelling.
18:12 It's never the truth.
18:13 It's somebody's truth.
18:15 And unfortunately, somebody's truth
18:17 is generally motivated now by a machine.
18:21 I mean, there's a machine inside that worldwide web
18:24 that goes, if the clickbait goes like that.
18:28 - And it's louder.
18:29 - It's louder, right?
18:30 So what I've really been reminded,
18:32 and I'm not saying I'm retiring, I'm retiring.
18:35 (audience laughing)
18:36 - No.
18:37 - No.
18:38 - No.
18:39 - I hope not.
18:40 - One more day.
18:41 (audience laughing)
18:43 - But no, in all honesty, you're all young filmmakers
18:46 and I find it so uplifting.
18:47 But I've been locked in a dark room,
18:52 very, very cold in a good way,
18:54 wearing a ski jacket in the hottest place in the world.
18:56 - Yeah, yeah.
18:57 - But loving it actually, loving it.
18:59 Because I've been looking at these movies
19:01 so diverse, so different.
19:02 Quite often, there's underlying thematics in them
19:06 that are quite similar.
19:08 And what I love about what you guys have been doing so far,
19:10 what I've seen, is that you're blending genres.
19:15 So you're taking a serious issue that's very present,
19:19 but you're also blending it with quite entertaining genre.
19:22 And I think that's so smart.
19:23 And back in my day, that's something I liked to do,
19:26 but it wasn't really that well accepted.
19:29 It was like, oh, too much confetti.
19:31 But just to put a nail in this,
19:34 the difference between someone who's maybe,
19:39 and I don't think it's documentary news,
19:41 who's doing that, and it's set up to an editor,
19:43 and they go like, how do we get our station
19:46 to get the most noise,
19:48 versus someone who spent five years
19:51 with a family telling a story.
19:55 Now, it's still gonna be your point of view,
19:58 but you've spent the time to dig in to the humanity of it.
20:03 - But that's why when you were talking about media,
20:05 I think that media and start something like Amnesia,
20:09 because it's so fast and so--
20:10 - Correct, absolutely.
20:11 - And that's why we need literature,
20:13 that's why we need movies,
20:14 because it's the memory of people, you know?
20:17 - 1000%.
20:18 - So it's very important to tell our stories.
20:20 It's like an obligation, almost.
20:23 - Yeah.
20:23 - People say, where'd you get your information from?
20:28 But it's not really information,
20:31 because that stuff coming through the tube,
20:32 or through TV, or on your phone like that--
20:34 - It's becoming a show.
20:35 - It's a show.
20:36 - It's a business.
20:37 - This is a gigantian shift in what that mechanic used to be.
20:42 That mechanic used to be people who used to go and report.
20:46 Report meant gather the information,
20:49 collect it to the best of your ability,
20:51 present it without your presence.
20:54 And now it's become, ladies and gentlemen, tonight.
20:57 And that is a show.
20:58 Well, if it's a show, call it a show.
20:59 What I like about drama, or dramatic documentary,
21:04 with drama, you are saying, it's a big lie.
21:06 I've just made this all up.
21:08 I am telling a story, right?
21:11 It's my story, but I'm telling the big lie
21:14 to reveal a greater truth.
21:16 As opposed to what I see coming,
21:19 what we see when you say it's a big show,
21:22 it's not only a big show, it's being presented as--
21:24 - It's the truth.
21:25 - The truth.
21:26 - Oh, it's so upsetting.
21:27 I mean, so disturbing.
21:28 - But you know where does it come from?
21:29 Because--
21:30 - Yes, I do.
21:31 - Yeah, you are an American, so.
21:33 - I'm not American.
21:34 - No, you're Australian.
21:35 - I'm Australian.
21:36 But actually, I might even be more complicity
21:39 in that than you think.
21:41 Because that revolution started actually,
21:45 I mean, I don't want to put out on this table
21:48 a clickbait that's gonna overshadow
21:51 the very important things that you're all saying.
21:53 That's another subject,
21:54 but I very much know where that started from.
21:56 I'll tell you something,
21:57 there's a great film that I love
21:59 from the 1970s called "Network."
22:02 - I love that.
22:03 - I love this film.
22:04 - Isn't that great?
22:04 - Oh my God.
22:05 - But you know what, guys, it was a satire.
22:07 And you know, it's an Australian actor
22:08 who posthumously won Peter Finch,
22:11 he won the award for best Oscar.
22:13 And the satire is, imagine a crazy world
22:17 where there's conflict, actually in the Middle East,
22:19 it's in it, where there's an oil crisis.
22:22 And the guy's just a news reader,
22:23 and he just reads the news, but he's old.
22:26 - Yeah.
22:26 - And it caught to them, you know,
22:28 he's got rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, the news.
22:29 I'm sorry, I have to get rid of you, you're too boring.
22:31 We need someone cooler and hipper.
22:33 And he goes mad, and he starts yelling,
22:35 I'm as mad as I am, and they go,
22:37 gee, that's entertaining, why don't we make the news--
22:39 - We can sing it.
22:40 - Entertaining.
22:41 Let's make it entertaining.
22:43 And this was hilarious and satirical,
22:46 except today, it's real.
22:48 And it's not funny.
22:49 - He went viral in today's terms.
22:52 - Absolutely went viral.
22:53 He went viral, and it's just, then it was a joke.
22:56 Now it's just actually--
22:58 - It's reality.
22:58 - I think it's bordering on, if not an evil,
23:02 one of the most destructive forces on the planet.
23:05 - Exactly.
23:06 - Yeah.
23:07 - So the media person here is gonna ask a question.
23:11 (laughing)
23:14 - I think we're out of time.
23:16 I was curious, because we talked,
23:19 I find it great how you guys all talked about
23:22 telling your own stories, and I think,
23:24 I picked this up from you as well,
23:26 that you learn so much, you see something,
23:28 you say, oh, I wasn't aware of this part of the world,
23:32 I wasn't aware of this thinking
23:33 or of this cultural approach to things.
23:36 I wanted to ask the reverse question.
23:39 Like in Hollywood, you sometimes see movies
23:41 and you see Muslims or you see people
23:43 from the Middle East portrayed,
23:45 and I sometimes wonder, do you ever watch any of these
23:47 and go, what, why?
23:51 Is there anything that ever annoys you,
23:53 or where you say, this is so wrong or so off,
23:55 can you share any of this with us?
23:57 - Yeah, I have a shock when I watch one of the,
24:01 it's a wonderful movie.
24:04 It's very well done, but when I watch it
24:08 with my eyes from this region, it's Lawrence of Arabia,
24:12 I was like, okay, why the protagonist is a white man?
24:17 Why we are talking about the Arabian Revolution
24:23 in those terms?
24:24 What did happen, what did the British in this region,
24:29 how they promised the Arabs something
24:31 and they went, they did another thing,
24:33 and they was mad as hell, you know, like a network.
24:39 I mean, it's a great movie, it had a lot of impact,
24:42 and I was thinking that maybe one day
24:45 we should tell a story with a protagonist
24:48 from the Arab Revolution, not a second character,
24:51 because again, when you, we all write story
24:55 around this table, the complexity you give it
24:58 to the protagonist, all the sides, you know,
25:01 the conflict, when you do a secondary character,
25:05 it's, you have one aspect, you know?
25:07 So when you are a marginalized character in your story,
25:12 you have one side, you have the prejudgment,
25:15 you have all those cliches thing, so I was,
25:19 yeah, this was, I--
25:20 - Okay, can I comment on that,
25:21 just because you happen to pick a film,
25:25 that when I grew up in a very small country town
25:27 in Australia, we had a gas station and a farm,
25:30 but for a moment, we ran the local cinema,
25:33 for through tragic circumstances,
25:35 but my father ran the cinema,
25:38 and one of the films that came there
25:39 was Lawrence of Arabia, and I loved the film,
25:42 I thought it was amazing.
25:43 - It's wonderful.
25:44 - Amazing, but I do wanna get to the point you make,
25:46 'cause it's a very, very good point,
25:48 I've just had recent experience of it.
25:49 What was wonderful about it, it left me this great love
25:53 of this part of the world.
25:55 Now, you're absolutely right, 'cause the film's made
25:57 in the '60s, there are worse things in that.
26:01 - I know.
26:01 - You didn't touch upon some of these, like,
26:03 Alec--
26:04 - But that's because I love the movie.
26:05 - I know, I know, Alec Guinness is a great actor,
26:07 but he plays King Faisal.
26:09 He's an English actor, playing King Faisal,
26:12 okay, you know, that's good, and Antony Quinn is Mexican,
26:15 and I mean, there's some of the worst makeup
26:17 in cinema on it, right?
26:18 But let's just hold it for a moment,
26:20 because I think what you're really getting at,
26:22 and by the way, I love your idea,
26:24 and you should be the one to do it,
26:25 because the Lawrence story's a fascinating one,
26:28 because I think the gestalt in the movie
26:31 is that in the end, Lawrence has a messianic complex,
26:34 he falls in love with the place,
26:36 the British and all of the West are going like,
26:38 yeah, yeah, we'll look after you,
26:39 we just wanna get rid of the Ottomans.
26:41 I mean, it's the Ottoman Empire,
26:43 they get rid of the Ottomans,
26:44 and Lawrence thinks he's become an Arab leader,
26:47 and he's mad, and he goes, right,
26:50 I've been promised at the Arab League
26:52 that you're all gonna get a fair,
26:54 it's gonna be handed over, really,
26:56 to the traditional owners of the land,
27:00 and they're double-crossed.
27:01 And that leads directly to where we are today.
27:03 So on that level, it's great.
27:05 But I've just revisited a film I did called Australia,
27:09 and I just have it on Disney+,
27:10 it's called Far Away Downs.
27:12 And what I tried to do, whether I was successful or not,
27:14 was take an old, gone-with-the-wind-like movie,
27:17 like an old melodrama, but flip it,
27:20 and tell it from the point of view
27:21 of a First Nations indigenous child,
27:24 who were taken from their families because of mixed race,
27:28 and locked up in compounds,
27:30 and it was totally destructive to the culture,
27:33 the indigenous culture.
27:34 Now I'm not saying I did it right,
27:36 or I did it particularly well,
27:37 and maybe I'm not the person to do it.
27:40 But if Lawrence, Lawrence has a fascinating story,
27:43 Seven Pillars of Wisdom, great.
27:45 He had an amazing relationship with Ali.
27:48 So where's the Ali version of, and he goes,
27:51 and I, by the way, and la la la, and Ali's alive,
27:53 and Ali's, and la la la la,
27:55 yeah, that sidekick character, Lawrence,
27:57 he really dug down.
27:59 You know, like, it's your jobs.
28:01 You guys are, you have the power to do it.
28:03 Now, by the way, just saying this,
28:04 I just saw amazing film studios down in Alula, right?
28:08 They're waiting for that version of this movie
28:10 to get to work.
28:11 (laughing)
28:13 - Who's ready to make a Lawrence or Ali movie?
28:16 - But flip it.
28:17 - It's about Saudi Arabia, you know?
28:19 It's about the country, but at the same time,
28:21 I feel like the challenges, or the things that we face
28:25 is putting all the Middle East in one thing,
28:28 you know, which is not, we're not.
28:30 We're totally different.
28:31 We're like a lot different than those.
28:33 And at the same time, always presenting Saudi
28:35 as the rich country, or the extreme country,
28:39 or the, and it's not.
28:40 It's our responsibility to say so,
28:43 but I do humor a lot in my films.
28:46 Just, I think humor kind of diffuse tension,
28:50 and make your story better if it's sensitive,
28:54 and it's around things like that.
28:56 So I think one of the challenges
28:58 is breaking stereotypes around your culture.
29:02 That's a preconceived notion that people have about it.
29:05 But sometimes I ask my question,
29:08 is it really important, is it really necessary
29:10 to think about that just to think about your story?
29:14 And if you're honest to your story,
29:16 that will be the truth, the new truth,
29:20 you know what I mean?
29:21 - Hey Ali, can I ask a quick question?
29:23 Because you bring something up,
29:24 and it's probably, believe you me,
29:25 it's not something that I'm,
29:29 look, I'm just intrigued by this, right?
29:32 Because I absolutely agree.
29:34 Like, what is going on in this region,
29:37 and it's a region right now, right?
29:41 People just, if you're not from anywhere around here,
29:43 there's a huge generalization in the West
29:45 of just sort of going like, that's one place.
29:47 - Yeah. - Ah yeah.
29:48 - It's all the same. - And it's very annoying.
29:49 - All right. - It's very annoying.
29:51 - It's of course. - It's annoying.
29:52 But do you think, and by the way, I'm not American.
29:55 (laughing)
29:56 So we do that too.
29:57 (laughing)
30:00 - I'm Australian.
30:00 - Stop, it's not that big a deal.
30:03 I've gotten over it.
30:04 But I do, I actually live in Australia, in Paris,
30:09 quite a lot, and we have a place in America too.
30:13 So we get around, we're Australians, we travel.
30:16 But do you think also that sometimes
30:21 there's a generalization that America is just one big place?
30:24 - Yeah.
30:25 - Because people who live in Florida generally
30:28 might be different from people who live in New York.
30:30 Might be different from people who live in Idaho.
30:33 - Actually, it's very interesting
30:34 because it's much easier not to understand the other
30:38 and to generalize the idea of a stereotype,
30:42 like all Arabs look the same, all Americans look the same,
30:46 or they act the same way.
30:47 - Or they think the same.
30:49 - Think the same.
30:50 And you know what, in Cannes, because this year
30:52 we have different Arab films, so there was like,
30:56 I don't know if it's a new sentence
31:00 that people are using, Arab cinema,
31:06 which is music to my ears.
31:09 Because I have a film from Jordan,
31:11 she has a film from Tunisia, she has a film from Morocco,
31:15 he has a film from Saudi, it's like,
31:17 yes, collectively we are Arabs, but it's a colorful,
31:21 very colorful story.
31:23 She has her own way to tell a story
31:26 from her own culture and background,
31:29 which is, there is a common stuff between us,
31:33 but it's totally different than Jordan, Tunisia.
31:35 And I have my own type of storytelling
31:40 and my own way to communicate the story
31:43 with my own background, and I was trying to reflect
31:47 my society through these stories.
31:50 So what's so interesting with cinema,
31:52 that we are, yes, collectively maybe we are coming
31:56 from the same region, but we have definitely
31:59 different stories, which is again, magic.
32:03 - I've seen some of the movies, I know that to be true.
32:06 While some of the themes may be central,
32:08 the diversity and the difference,
32:10 it goes back to what you said in the beginning.
32:12 As children, you were compelled to tell a story.
32:19 Growing up hearing your father, or wanting to draw a story,
32:22 or feeling isolated, whatever that was, or the cinema.
32:27 And then we spend the rest of our lives
32:31 trying to hang on to that purity, really,
32:35 our compulsion to tell them, and to keep the way we tell them,
32:39 ours, and individual.
32:41 And I do think, back to our friends,
32:43 and we're talking about where the media is headed
32:46 into a showmanship, and a showbiz,
32:49 it's really useful, the machine,
32:52 and it really is the machine, gets good click bait,
32:54 if it generalizes about the Middle East,
32:57 if it generalizes about America.
32:59 I mean, to be honest, I was in the Oscar run last year,
33:03 it was won by everything and everywhere at once.
33:06 I loved the movie, right?
33:08 It was an Asian-American picture,
33:10 when Parasite won Best Picture, amazing.
33:13 I've got one expectation I will leave you all with.
33:17 Please, before I retire, make sure that a film
33:22 from the Arab region wins Best Picture, that is your job.
33:27 Not just here.
33:29 - Everybody's ready to see.
33:30 - But at the Oscars, I'll see you guys at the Oscars.
33:32 - All of us, no?
33:34 - Sure, why not?
33:35 By the way, that's the other really
33:36 revolutionally wonderful thing, it was the two Daniels.
33:39 This thing of two directors, collaborative director,
33:41 I love it.
33:42 Oh my gosh, it was so awesome, I'm going like,
33:44 can anyone collaborate with me?
33:45 'Cause I really can't just do it on my own.
33:47 (laughing)
33:49 - I like the idea that films come from the childhood,
33:53 the six years of Freud that talked about,
33:56 and behind the naivety of things we can't pass,
33:59 the very hard things and the very traumatic thing.
34:02 And that's why for me, it's important to ask
34:04 the first question, where are you in this film?
34:07 Not, I'm from Morocco, I'm sure I cannot make films
34:11 about Tunisia because it's not my identity.
34:14 But we are together, we were talking about Arab cinema.
34:18 And it's really important to talk about
34:20 what happened in the six years, the first six years,
34:23 because everything comes from the human being.
34:26 - It does, and you know what?
34:27 You're kind of, 'cause I can say this with great authority,
34:31 'cause I'm the oldest, you can get lost.
34:37 Your language can get lost because success
34:40 actually breeds all these sort of bubbles,
34:42 and these are great, they're great.
34:43 Oh, what do you know, you're getting out of a restaurant.
34:44 Oh, you know, great.
34:46 - Oh my God, this is the most scary.
34:46 - And then suddenly once you get that,
34:49 you go like, hmm, I've got to kind of maintain that.
34:51 You know, how do I, you know?
34:53 So you get lost, but that's all right.
34:54 You can also then be reborn into
34:57 that pure initial gesture, I believe.
35:01 Having said that, it's, hmm, tonight's news.
35:05 (laughing)
35:07 That was Adam's house.
35:09 - Thank you for asking, for joining us.
35:10 - Yeah, I should keep talking.
35:11 - We'll send you off.
35:12 - Keep talking, but more importantly,
35:13 keep telling stories.
35:14 - Thank you. - Thank you.
35:15 - Thank you. - Thank you.
35:16 - Thank you. - So nice meeting you.
35:18 - Nice to meet you.
35:19 - Well, I think we can do maybe another couple of rounds.
35:22 You can see it when you guys talk about filmmaking.
35:24 You guys are so passionate about your work, which is great.
35:27 Because that alone already makes me go,
35:29 oh, now I just want to see this movie more, right?
35:31 Because I can see you guys put your heart
35:33 and your soul into it.
35:35 If you guys weren't making movies,
35:38 what would you do for a living?
35:40 - Oh my God. - Did you?
35:41 - I don't know, raising cats?
35:44 (laughing)
35:46 - Great choice.
35:47 - This is very beautiful.
35:48 - Yeah. - Yeah.
35:49 - Almost poetic.
35:50 - Yeah. - Almost poetic.
35:51 - Thank God.
35:52 - I literally don't know what else I could do.
35:56 I mean, definitely something involved in storytelling,
35:59 whether it's, yeah, music or writing.
36:01 I think I can't let that go.
36:04 I love cinema because I can kind of combine
36:07 visual with stories and that's what really excites me.
36:11 And there's so many people involved,
36:12 so much collaboration that I love.
36:15 I love working in cinema just because of, you know,
36:18 that amount of collaboration and the minds
36:21 that you work with, the stories that you're getting,
36:23 even just from your own team to create this one thing
36:26 is so magical and beautiful.
36:28 So I don't know, if not for a film, yeah, I'll raise cats.
36:31 (laughing)
36:34 - I like this. - Yeah?
36:35 - I love this.
36:36 - You guys go work together.
36:38 (laughing)
36:40 - The cat farm.
36:41 - Yeah.
36:42 - I love it.
36:42 Can we get dogs?
36:44 - Yes.
36:45 (laughing)
36:47 - I'm in for it.
36:47 - To make sure.
36:48 - Yeah, you're into it.
36:49 - Yeah, big plans.
36:51 - No, actually, I like the cat project.
36:54 (laughing)
36:55 - The project, yeah.
36:56 - It's real.
36:57 (laughing)
36:59 - How do we finance it?
37:00 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:01 - Give us the idea.
37:02 - I think I would be a chef.
37:05 - Ooh.
37:06 - A chef, although I'm very bad with cooking
37:09 because I can't follow a recipe.
37:11 I like to be creative while doing things.
37:14 - But at the end, it's good.
37:15 - It's bad.
37:16 (laughing)
37:17 It's so bad.
37:18 - Okay.
37:19 - Oh, yeah.
37:20 - So go to cinema.
37:20 - I still check it out, you know.
37:22 (laughing)
37:23 - But I think if I follow a recipe,
37:25 once I tried it, like to follow a recipe, it was good.
37:29 (laughing)
37:31 - And you're gonna join them in the--
37:32 - I don't know, I will be psy, psychiatrist.
37:34 What is psychiatry?
37:35 - Psychiatrist.
37:36 - Psychiatrist.
37:37 - Psychiatrist.
37:38 - Yeah, because it's near, yeah.
37:39 - Psychologist.
37:39 - It's near, like we are making films about trauma.
37:43 Well, I mean, we are provoking things.
37:45 We will not kill anyone,
37:47 but finally it's gonna be a therapy for someone.
37:52 So if I have no, I have no money now for cinema.
37:56 Just like spend money, but I get no money from cinema.
37:59 (laughing)
38:00 All of you.
38:01 But one day, if I really give up cinema,
38:05 I will just start learning how to just listen to the people
38:10 because this is a good job.
38:11 - Interesting, now I feel stupid with my answer.
38:14 (laughing)
38:16 - The other job is that, like.
38:18 (laughing)
38:20 - I guess I'll be a teacher.
38:21 - Oh.
38:22 - 'Cause that's--
38:23 - You stole it from me.
38:24 - Oh my God.
38:25 - I was like, I don't think only you are.
38:26 (laughing)
38:27 - No, for me, it's my retirement plan.
38:31 - That was my first job.
38:32 Then I--
38:33 - Like you?
38:34 - Yeah, yeah.
38:35 - What did you teach?
38:36 - Computer science.
38:37 - Oh.
38:38 - Wow.
38:39 - But I wasn't, I was so awkward with it
38:41 'cause I was too young and everybody in the school
38:44 was older than me.
38:46 So I had to like screw up.
38:48 I had to like fake a character.
38:49 I was acting with them.
38:51 Just to get respect, you know what I mean?
38:53 - Child genius.
38:54 - Yeah, yeah.
38:55 But I'll do that in drawing as well 'cause I love drawing.
38:59 So I would do that, yeah.
39:01 And transforming knowledge is really great, you know?
39:04 'Cause directors, what they do is mostly as well
39:07 when they work with the team is talking about like knowledge
39:11 and you're passing your knowledge of the film
39:13 and how you, it's communication.
39:15 So I think that would be a good place to come back to, yeah?
39:19 - Yeah, for me, I was thinking about teaching
39:22 because I am--
39:24 - Let's open a school together.
39:25 (laughing)
39:27 - That's all I'm asking.
39:29 (laughing)
39:32 - This is more serious stuff.
39:34 And then we teach your cats and dogs.
39:36 (laughing)
39:38 - No, but I think that teaching is,
39:44 I mean, I was inspired by teacher when I was young.
39:48 They give me something very precious
39:51 that added to my personality.
39:53 And I always remember them with a lot of affection
39:58 because they made me a better person.
40:00 So I thought that if I not do cinema,
40:04 I want to play this role in people life.
40:07 What to teach, I don't know.
40:08 Maybe literature because I love literature.
40:11 And it's always about storytelling.
40:13 It's about how to see the world.
40:15 But this is my retirement plan.
40:17 (laughing)
40:18 - I like it.
40:19 - Let's think about that project, though.
40:20 - Yeah, sure.
40:21 - It's a good project to have, yeah.
40:23 - Well, as the final question, I wanna,
40:24 you know, one of the things I noticed,
40:26 as a journalist, you always think,
40:28 oh, we know what people are interested in.
40:30 And then, you know, a few years ago,
40:31 I just, at the end of a conversation,
40:33 I said to somebody,
40:34 "By the way, what's important to you
40:36 "that we didn't talk about?"
40:37 And the guy said, "I want to say
40:39 "that the whales will be saved."
40:41 I said, "Oh, okay."
40:42 And then we talked about that for a few minutes.
40:44 So now I sometimes end by saying to people,
40:46 you know, what didn't I ask you about
40:48 that's important to you that you would like to talk about
40:51 just because it's something that you spend time
40:53 or energy with or something that's close to your heart.
40:56 And you never get a chance to talk about it,
40:57 because you always have to talk about the movies.
40:59 If it's nothing, we can just--
41:01 - But we are really happy to have all of us with films.
41:05 Achieving a film, it's not easy.
41:08 I mean, yeah.
41:09 - It's a miracle.
41:10 - Yeah, for me, it was 10 years working with my family.
41:14 I cannot tell that I hate them now,
41:17 because there is camera.
41:19 (all laughing)
41:20 But I hate to watch my films today,
41:23 because it was very traumatic to finish film.
41:27 Not as a woman or as a man, it's the same.
41:30 The process, how making film is difficult.
41:32 So if someone just can arrive to achieve something,
41:36 achieve films, to show it to the international level,
41:39 to arrive to get selected by the country,
41:43 representing their countries for the Oscars,
41:45 it's really nice.
41:46 And I hope that one of, I mean,
41:49 I'm so sorry, but I will talk about Arab films
41:52 as I'm coming from Arab country.
41:54 So I hope that one of us just have something.
41:59 If there is someone, it will be Kauthara,
42:01 because she did a lot.
42:03 - So I was thinking, thank you.
42:06 No, but I had, like you said something not about our films.
42:11 - Well, it can be, no, no, no, it's fine.
42:14 - So I had this nihilist thing, I'm sorry, guys.
42:18 But sometimes when I see what is happening,
42:20 you know, right now in Gaza,
42:23 I think that what, why we are doing all this,
42:27 you know, it's about ending the life of people.
42:29 We are talking about life.
42:31 So I get in this nihilist path
42:35 where nothing looks to me important, you know.
42:39 We will die all, this planet will perish,
42:43 nothing will stay.
42:44 I'm sorry to put it this way,
42:46 but this is my mood those days.
42:47 So I'm trying to smile,
42:50 I'm trying to present the movie talking,
42:52 but it's very hard, you know.
42:54 So I'm sorry about this.
42:56 - I understand.
42:58 - But it's something very difficult, you know.
43:02 - Yeah.
43:03 - We're living in a tough time,
43:05 but the hanging to your films
43:06 and keep telling stories is really important.
43:11 - I know.
43:12 - I totally agree.
43:13 Yeah, like in a time like this,
43:14 it's like, you know, we were talking about earlier on,
43:16 about stories is the way to hopefully,
43:20 you know, kind of bring people together.
43:23 The sad thing is that like,
43:25 we need to keep fighting for audience
43:27 to watch these stories.
43:29 That's the problem because this clickbait,
43:31 like crap is taking over.
43:33 And it's like, I'd love to have more people in the cinema
43:37 watching stories from everywhere
43:38 from all our mini propagandas, personal propagandas,
43:42 because that's, I don't know, it helps me a lot, you know,
43:45 and it helps people who actually do listen to stories,
43:48 like listen to people, listen to others,
43:50 and not the loud voice that's dominating everything.
43:54 - Yeah, and it's our duty to have,
43:56 through all the violence and stuff,
43:58 to actually own our narrative, you know,
44:01 own our narrative, 'cause there is so much stories
44:06 and misleading stuff and lies spread around.
44:10 It's very valid for us and important for us
44:13 to keep telling these stories,
44:14 'cause that's a duty, I guess.
44:18 But that's it, that's what I'm...
44:20 - Should we leave it at that?
44:22 - Thank you. - Thank you.
44:23 - Thank you. - Thank you.
44:24 - Thank you for having us. - Thanks for having us.
44:25 - Thank you. - Thank you so much.
44:27 [BLANK_AUDIO]