Cinema: Captain Abu Raed
Published in Gulf Life, September 2007
Amin Matalqa stands on the brink of a breakthrough. The young, quietly passionate Jordanian director is aiming to pull off a dramatic debut with what all concerned hope will be the first Arabic-language feature film to capture a mainstream audience around the world.
Captain Abu Raed, Matalqa’s tale of an old man who helps turn the lives of the children in his neighbourhood around, has all the right elements in place: an original story, rooted in its Jordanian setting but with universal appeal; a cast that mixes unknowns with local and international stars; a technically outstanding crew from the US and around the world; solid financial backing; and a network of Hollywood insider connections to guarantee a high-profile splash.
Currently in post-production, after two years of planning and a four-week location shoot this summer in Jordan, Captain Abu Raed is set for a premiere in Amman later this year, with worldwide release scheduled for mid-2008.
The film – the first Jordanian production in over half a century – is the brainchild of two recent graduates. Amin Matalqa, 31, was a sales executive until he quit to enrol at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, while Laith Majali was destined for a career in the military before backing out to study film and television in North Carolina.
They began collaborating in 2004, but the catalyst was a dinner party shortly after, when Majali’s 16-year-old sister Ban pestered David Pritchard, president of Gigapix Studios and Emmy-winning producer of The Simpsons, to meet her brother.
“I told her ‘yes, yes, yes’ and I meant ‘no, no, no’,” Pritchard says. “But then Laith introduced me to Amin, and I realized they were both evangelical about making films and both wanted to make a contribution to their country.”
Pritchard – who has business connections with Jordan going back to 1973 – became the pair’s mentor, encouraging them to come up with a screenplay. Matalqa recalls, “I spent ten days writing the script – and then a year and a half rewriting it! But it’s that time which has made it what it’s become.”
His story is simple. Abu Raed is an airport janitor, an old man who has only ever experienced the world at second-hand, through books and brief encounters with travellers. Mistaken for a pilot by the kids in his neighbourhood, he fires their imagination with tall tales but also discovers the grim realities in their lives. Through a chance meeting with Nour, a young, headstrong female pilot, he tries to make a difference – only to become caught up in events.
The cast is a remarkable mix of pros and first-timers, headed by the highly respected Jordanian-British actor Nadim Sawalha. Alongside a prolific career on British television, Sawalha’s numerous film roles include an acclaimed performance in George Clooney’s 2005 thriller Syriana, while on stage he has acted with Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company and produced several of his own plays in London.
Sawalha’s parents lived in a tent in the Jordanian countryside, near Madaba, and he was born sometime in 1935, though he doesn’t know the exact date – “Seven is my lucky number, so I’ve settled on 7th September,” he says. Sawalha studied drama in England in the 1950s before spending ten years in the BBC’s Arabic Service, partly as assistant to the great Sudanese novelist Tayyib Saleh. His first screen appearance was in A Touch of Class (1973), with George Segal and Glenda Jackson and although he often returns to Jordan to work with his brother Nabil, at Amman’s Theatre of Political Satire, he still lives in London.
“I never expected all this to happen,” Sawalha admits. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I start laughing, honestly. It’s unbelievable. I’ve never had a better time in my life. Never been busier, never been more tired, never been happier. And now, at my age, I get to play the best Jordanian character that’s ever been written. What more could you want?”
His most telling interaction in the film is with a group of children who play the kids in Abu Raed’s neighbourhood. None is trained in acting and all come from low-income backgrounds. Matalqa scoured Jordan’s refugee camps with producer Nadine Toukan to find them; one in particular – Hussein al-Sous, who plays Murad, a teenager beaten by his father – has blossomed.
“As soon as I saw him,” says Matalqa, “I said ‘This kid looks like Murad!’ There’s something in his eyes. And he really has an instinct for acting.” Money from the movie’s profits will be diverted into a fund to support all the children through their schooling.
Murad’s abusive father, Abu Murad, is played by Jordanian actor Ghandi Saber, who is keenly aware of the implications of highlighting issues such as family violence that are rarely discussed in Jordan. “But if the real Abu Murad sees himself on the screen,” he reasons, “maybe he will change.”
Rana Sultan, who plays Nour, agrees: “People will be shocked by what happens to the children – but the film will also be inspiring.” This is Sultan’s movie debut, yet she is already a household name in Jordan as presenter of Yis’ed Sabahak, the most-watched show on Jordan Television.
The off-screen crew also takes in a mix of local and international talent, not least cinematographer Reinhart Peschke, whose credits include JFK, and producer Kenneth Kokin (The Usual Suspects). Hollywood-based production designer Gerald Sullivan recalls, “When I read the script, I was working on The Kingdom, [an action movie] which stereotypes Arabs as terrorists. I felt I had to do Captain Abu Raed. This is my first trip to the Middle East and I would come back in a heartbeat.”
As for financing, Captain Abu Raed, uniquely, is backed by Jordanian money. The modest budget of US$1.39m was raised by Paper and Pen Films, a finance and production company managed by Aida Matalqa (mother of Amin) founded specifically to bring Jordanian films in Arabic to an international audience.
Ambitions are high. “The goal of Paper and Pen,” says David Pritchard, executive producer, “is to help Jordan replace Italy and France as the hotbed of independent filmmaking. The Arab world to date has been a ‘read-only’ culture as far as the film and television business goes, dominated by the US and western Europe. Here’s an opportunity for it to become a shaper of world culture.”
“The Arab people,” notes Isam Salfiti, president of the Union Bank of Jordan and also Paper and Pen’s chairman, “have a deep history as storytellers. Building on that heritage by producing our own feature films is not only the start of a dynamic new industry in Jordan, it is an expression of pride in our culture.”
Pritchard agrees. “There’s a lot of motivated investors here who want their children to stay and tell stories from the Arab point of view. My vision is that Paper and Pen’s films be seen by 5-8 million Americans and 5-8 million Europeans. If that happens, the visual framework that people have for Arabs will no longer be driven by news.”
As this article goes to press, Matalqa is in Los Angeles with his editor, Majali, bringing the film together with its specially commissioned score by Jordanian composer Nasser Sharaf. As production designer Gerald Sullivan notes: “I’ve worked with a bunch of people in my career – and Amin Matalqa is a director to watch.”
[More information is at www.captainaburaed.com]