For Bahraini filmmaker Mohammad Rashid Buali, directing his debut feature film The Sleeping Tree was both an extraordinarily long experience and a very personal process.
The film is about a bedridden young girl by the name of Amina, who suffers from cerebral palsy — a set of permanent movement problems. Her young parents, Jassim and Noora, struggle to keep their marriage afloat as they react to her sickness in different ways — Noora stays home to care for her daughter, while Jassim detaches himself from the situation at hand. When Jassim takes his brother’s taxi out, however, he comes across the Tree of Life and a spark of hope is ignited within him.
The film blends reality with dreamscapes and the past with the future, but the basis for it comes from Buali’s own childhood as he watched his sister suffer from the same disease. Asked to talk about it at a press conference on Sunday afternoon, he said the topic hits a raw nerve, and that he was hesitant to address his connection to the story altogether.
“I was very young at the time, but I was deeply impacted. I don’t even have the words for the experience,” Buali said.
Buali partnered up with established screenwriter Fareed Ramadan to bring The Sleeping Tree to life, but the script took ten years and twelve treatments to fully conceptualise. Buali described their creative partnership as one that spurred madness in them. Ramadan, who also dealt with a loved one suffering from the disease, seemed to agree, calling Buali an “educated and cheeky” director.
“We were liberating ourselves from our pain. We distanced our personal selves from the film’s story, and we were able to connect with the sense of hope of our characters,” Ramadan said.
TV actress Haifaa Hussain plays mother Noora in her first cinematic role.
“A strong script is the spine of any work, television or film. When I read The Sleeping Tree, I told Buali, ‘This is the script I’ve been searching for all along. This is my dream’,” she said.
Hawra Sharif plays the key role of Amina. She spent three months visiting hospitals to study cases of cerebral palsy in preparation for the movie, and though she said it was tough to see children as young as three and four in pain, she thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the project.
Hussain, Buali, Ramadan and producer Suha Matar all either met at the Dubai International Film Festival or Dubai’s Arabic-language Gulf Film Festival. The film was funded partially by the Diff and Enjaaz, as well as the private and public sector in Bahrain. The film had its world premiere on Sunday night at Diff’s 11th edition.
“If I were to thank the Dubai International Film Festival until tomorrow, it would never be enough,” said Buali.
