Dubai: The 2007 Wafi Mall heist — when thieves drove cars into the mall, smashed into the Graff store and brazenly made off with Dh14 million worth of jewels —sounds like the stuff of movies.
Now, it actually is.
British director Havana Marking’s documentary “Smash and Grab”, about the gang behind the raid – known as the Pink Panthers — screens at this year’s Dubai International Film Festival, and while on the outside it has the hallmarks of a Hollywood crime thriller, the true story is a lot bleaker.
“By the end you realise it’s not the glamorous crime-pays kind of ending,” said Marking over the phone from London, ahead of her film screening on Tuesday at the festival. “It’s actually people are paranoid and on tranquillisers and desperately guilty and relationships don’t work and you realise it doesn’t pay at all, crime. It’s awful. You wouldn’t want to be one,” she adds with a grim chuckle.
Markings – who won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival for her previous film, Afghan Star, about American Idol-type competitions in Afghanistan — turned her camera on the gang, who mostly originated in the former Yugoslavia, and gain incredible access not only to Dubai Police, but also to five at-large members of the gang.
“They were all very candid and very honest. It reveals a great deal, not just about how a contemporary criminal gang works, but also what makes someone turn to that as a lifestyle,”says Markings, who adds that she became interested in the gang because of the historical and political conflicts in Eastern Europe that she believes played a role in its formation. The collapse of Yugoslavia after civil war in the 1990s created a state lacking in job opportunities or education, where crime was one of the few available options, says the director. “You can sympthise without thinking it’s acceptable,” says Markings, asked how she balanced that with not excusing their actions. “It’s a tricky balance. But I think it’s really important to understand the context of the conflicts. By the end of the film, I don’t think there’s a sense that you yourself would want to be any of these guys.”
The Dubai robbery in 2007 – in while one of the members of the gang was caught and sentenced to 10 years in prison — marked a turning point in the fortunes of the gang, says Markings. The gang had previously pulled off heists in a glamorous roster of London, Japan, Switzerland, Paris. The Dubai section is really important,” says Markings. “In the history of the Pink Panthers, that is the moment when things start to change. That’s when Interpol realise that these thieves have been getting away with what they are doing for a long time — since about 2000. That’s when all the police start working together. The Dubai Police did an amazing job and got loads of DNA evidence. It was through that and the communication through the global police force that allowed them to catch most of these robbers. It’s kind of been a downhill slide from that moment for the Panthers. Many of them are now in prison.”
For now, at least; a number of the Panthers have escaped from prison in the past year, in flights so brazen – think machine guns fired at prison guards – that it’s only a matter of time before a film is made about that part of the story, too. (In case you weren’t convinced about just how cinematic Marking’s film is, director Danny Boyle has announced he will start work on a feature film about the Panthers, based on Smash and Grab.)
But in Dubai, it’s still the incredible case of the Wafi heist that captures our attention, and Markings’ remarkable collaboration with Dubai Police on the film, which includes CCTV footage from the mall.
“I was the first non-Emirati film[maker] to be given access to the police in Dubai. They were fantastic, I had access to three different members, including General Al Mazaina, who has now been made Chief Commander, and he was key in that case.” For the many locals who helped her with the story, Markings has gone to the extra expense of getting Arabic subtitles for the screenings at Diff.
“We really hope that they can come and enjoy it as well,” says the director, whose next project will also involve the collaboration of Dubai Police: she’s making a film about the gruesome 2008 murder in Dubai of Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim by Egyptian businessman Hesham Talaat Moustafa.
“I am an honest filmmaker. Even though the Pink Panthers sounds like a sensationalist film, it’s not at all, or it begins as one and very quickly you discover there’s a lot to it, which I think is also the case on the Tamim film.”
