Director's cut

Ashley Hammond tries not to get on the wrong side of Emirati film-maker Mustafa Abbas.

Pull over just here," says a grave voice beside me to the driver up front, "pop the boot and I'll get the axe." We're in a deserted strip, where only power lines disturb an otherwise perfect cityscape. It's deathly silent and no one else is around.

The warm breeze forces sand to dance across an empty highway as the door of the car is opened for me by a shady figure in a crisp suit.

"This is where it's gonna happen Ash. If you write something I don't like you'll end up here."

The figure stands over me, a shadow emblazoned with brightness all around, tie flapping wildly. I squint, only to see him shooting at me using two pointed fingers. He lifts and blows mock smoke from the barrels, then cracks up, unable to hold up the gangster image for long. "You should have seen your face," he laughs, pulling his shades past the ridge of his nose.

Able to turn the mood on a sixpence with a series of dark-humoured quips and some deathly stares to anyone caught laughing, Mustafa Abbas, a 24-year-old Emirati film writer and director comes across as every inch of the characters he tries to portray in his short films. Films that have so far won him critical acclaim in the local industry, screenings at the Cannes Festival and awards at local cinematic competitions.

Not bad for someone who started out using a handy cam and a few of his cousins, shooting crime thrillers around villas and warehouses belonging to his family and friends.

Shot using little-to-no budget and as raw in production as their nature, his work is entirely in English and heavily skewed toward a western audience, something that is unusual for a film-maker from this region.

He stands on an embankment in lonely Nad al Sheba, shoes sinking in the sand with a vast cityscape behind and says, "This is why I love Dubai, people say it has no soul, but perhaps that's a blessing in disguise. You can adapt any type of feel to it."

"If you want that romantic New York atmosphere, Dubai has it, and if you want that gangster LA feel, well…" he motions to his surroundings arms outstretched.

FILMOGRAPHY

Abbas has 12 unproduced feature length scripts, two stage plays and a novel about love on the go, excluding a catalogue of short films previous to this. However 100 miles, his first major short film, is the point at which a proud Mustafa deems it appropriate for me to begin his story.

A disturbed and aggressive psychological thriller involving a paranoid schizophrenic sent to kill a rapist; it represents a grassroots attempt at cinema, 100 miles from becoming his first feature-length blockbuster but 100 miles closer to the feat than any other Emirati counterpart in his age-group or genre.

It won him Best Non-Documentary Film at the 2007 Emirates Film Competition and was also screened at the Dubai Film Festival that year.

Gritty, compelling and vivid to the extent you can almost taste gun residue in the air, his films are a real assault on the senses.

Always kicking off in complete confusion, the only way to work it all out is to hang on every expletive which streams from twitchy gunmen, or blood-drenched hostages. Things are never quite as they seem, and the longer you hang on to the intrinsic plot, the clearer that becomes.

Like Pulp Fiction and Taxi Driver, Mustafa's choice of genre descends from neo-noir, a derivative of film noir, a 1940s style which typified black and white shady detective tales of the era.

Having played with the colour contrast and saturation tools in editing, Mustafa also toys with frame frequency during fight scenes to give his footage a hint of the graphic novel feel, much like the comic books of his youth.

As if you're coming round from a beating of your own, his skies are bleached out beyond definition, leaving only the clarity of blood and stubble to permeate otherwise sepia-hued surroundings.

Every character has a dreamlike aura, every blood splatter seeps into the floor like it would on a computer game.

Where tone of skin looks airbrushed or non-descript, other factors such as the detail of water droplets on a shower curtain are enhanced to psychedelic proportion. It's what he's become known for, adding the effect to The Alley, his second film, consequently screened at Cannes, about a man who awakes from a three-year coma with only revenge in mind.

In his latest effort Rain, shown at last month's Gulf Film Festival, he's made a concerted effort to shy away from the shadowy lighting into the realm of more realistic noir, a genre Mustafa may have just invented as his style matures.

"I searched for movies looking for these particular styles, with this feel and detail. But what I was looking for just didn't exist, I had to create it. It was my strength, weakness, power and curse. I have to do this."

HIS THOUGHTFUL SIDE

Nayla Al Khaja, a renowned local film-maker and producer kids that perhaps Mustafa played too much Playstation when he was growing up.

But he can back up his violence, swearing and guns largely with other more genteel additions, which might go otherwise unnoticed. For instance the importance of birds and subliminal messages weigh heavy in his filmmaking.

Crows symbolise evil, death and funereal overtones, while a seagull or a dove presents life and innocence.

He also feels the need to take each of his characters through their own process of change throughout the film. Whether conflicts are in the protagonist's mind or in his circumstances, they must always change him.

This humanises his creations and makes the film less of a basic tale of good versus evil, like you'd come to expect given that his basis of inspiration comes from comic books.

"Real life is more complicated than that. If nothing changes, it means the situation wasn't extreme, nothing was at stake, the story and its elements didn't reach the point of no return."

Often complex and overly involved, his films demand a second viewing and it's at that point at which Mustafa hopes to hook his real audience. After all, his favourite films The Departed and Heat have only become so after a second or third viewing – when he's able to pick up every detail that was intended to come across.

THE ELUSIVE FEATURE

Abbas admits his films aren't for everyone, and acknowledges he leans more toward a western market but insists that's where he'll stay for the sake of the people he's making them for. As well as giving back to his country, the plan is to write, direct and shoot in Los Angeles or London and to sell screenplays abroad because he can't produce them all at the rate in which he's writing them.

But for all his enthusiasm and hope, there comes a stark warning from those who have gone before him.

Ali Mustafa, a more seasoned director who has just shot his first feature City of Life said, "Mustafa clearly has talent and gets better with every film, but the biggest risk is for him to take this up as a career."

"No one believes in films here, I can count maybe six to 10 features that have been made in the UAE's history and none of them have reached abroad. I wish him all the best, but realistically, even I am only earning my bread and butter doing TV commercials."

Nayla Al Khaja agrees, "With the industry here still in its infancy, without proper financing and infrastructure, how are we supposed to incubate real talent? Using pocket money and passion, it's a wonder they've got this far."

So many fall by the wayside, but Mustafa's attitude doesn't allow for failure. With no formal income since his graduation in filmography from Middlesex University, he remains convinced that the big feature he's aiming for, an Arabic film about street gangs, will eventually find a backer.

If it doesn't and this article comes back to haunt him, you'll know where to find me.