Entertainment | Film & Cinema
Yemeni film sees the light of day
Britain-based Arab filmmakers cope with hostile press, angry locals and the stabbing of a lead actor to release A New Day In Old Sana'a, Yemen's first feature film
- By Daniel Bardsley, Staff Reporter
- Published: 23:31 May 3, 2009
Arab filmmakers Bader Ben Hirsi and Ahmad Abdali knew they would have to jump through a few hoops to make Yemen's first ever feature film - but they never expected life to be as tough as it was.
They had to cope with hostile press coverage, angry locals, threats the film would be banned and the stabbing of one of their lead actors.
The British pair of Yemeni origin are pleased that they pressed ahead with A New Day In Old Sana'a as they scooped a major prize at the recent Cairo film festival and now have distributors on the telephone desperate to take the film.
"When we started to film, things started to go wrong. The money we were promised by a government ministry was cut from $200,000 (Dh735, 600) to $80,000 (Dh294, 240) and then $40,000 (Dh147, 120).
"In Old Sana'a people stormed our set and said: 'We don't want this film in our country.' I told them they didn't speak for Yemen," said Ben Hirsi, who directed the film.
All this came shortly after Mathias Radel from Vienna, who had been lined up to play one of the lead characters, was stabbed in Yemen in a spate of violence aimed at Westerners. A new actor was found to replace the critically injured Radel.
Ben Hirsi said there were dozens of articles in local newspapers accusing the film crew of being everything from CIA agents to con merchants who were going to run off with the money that backers had put into the film.
"The problems just escalated. It reached parliament and filming was stopped for a couple of days.
"And then once we'd finished, the film was stopped at the airport and we were told we'd have to pay millions of dollars if it turned out we had deviated from our original script," said Ben Hirsi, a 37-year-old who was born in the UK to Yemeni parents.
Film producer Abdali, also 37, said to an extent the trials and tribulations of making A New Day in Sana'a were to be expected.
"You're making a film for the first time in a country that's never really experienced it before. They wonder who you are and what you are doing there," he said.
The film centres on a photographer's assistant, Tariq, whose fiancée?s wedding dress disappears. Tariq later sees the dress being worn by a young woman wandering the streets - and then he falls in love with her.
Although the film looks set to be a major success across the Arab world, and is also likely to show in arthouse cinemas in Europe, Ben Hirsi and Abdali said at first many people wondered who it would appeal to.
Ben Hirsi explained: "It is a bitter-sweet romantic film with some comedy, but it's pure entertainment, which is rare for an Arab film. Most of them are very political.
"Our film is not about Iraq or Palestine or something that?s just focused on the Egyptian market. I think that shook some people. The distributors were asking: 'Where's the war, where's the oppression, where's the slant on Islam?"
"Now the success we've had means the situation is very different and we've got distributors very interested for the Arab market. That's great, but we're not sure if it will be shown in Yemeni cinemas - there are only five of them in any case."
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