Diff 2017: ‘SNL Arabia’ cast bring the funny

The cast of Saturday Night Live Bil Arabi brought jokes and a lot of insight to the Dubai International Film Festival (Diff).

“The strength of the jokes all come from the writing,” said performer and writer Shadi Alfons, while talking about the recipe behind the show’s success. “One thing that we’ve really changed in season four is that we really sat down to improve the quality and assess our strong points and see how we can make them better and where possible weak points may be.”

It wasn’t long before Alfons, along with his comedy partner Khalid Mansour, fell into their comedy routine.

“As for weak points, one is Mansour [who] is unfortunately on contract so we can’t get rid of him,” said Alfons jokingly.

Director Amr Salama, also spilled the beans on they write the episodes, the Arabic version of the hit American sketch show.

“The process starts with an idea then it becomes, ‘can we do that? Yes? Then let’s do it’ or ‘we can’t?’ and then we don’t. It’s really a trial and error phase that we keep on going through till we reach what we envisioned,” he said.

SNL Bil Arabi airs on OSN.

— The Young Journalist Award (YJA) at Diff is a training programme for high school and university students who are aspiring writers and reporters. Seven students are competing at the festival this year. One winner will secure a monthlong internship with Gulf News.