Emirati short film 'Al Rawy' is a story about the UAE, friendship, and pearl diving

There’s something magical about the storyteller becoming part of the tale as a listener takes on the role of orator. In the six-minute Emirati short Al Rawy, circular storytelling ropes in a grandfather and granddaughter, who speak of the UAE saga – its evolution from the days of pearl diving, where each breath of a diver was a testament to his trust in his crewmates, to today when the world has changed but fundamental truths have not. The story itself concentrates on the friendship of two men in the 1960s and by the end of the movie, the grandfather has handed down the cap of storyteller to the granddaughter – and the lesson lives on.

Director Youssef Akef, of The Way Studio, told Gulf News in an interview that the project came as a niggling thought while working on another video for the annually held 26th Sharjah International Narrator Forum. It needed to be a movie about the country, yes, but also friendship, an element woven so deeply into the Emirates’ tapestry that is deserved its own screentime. “Aisha Rashid Al Hussan Al Shamsi, Director of the Arab Heritage Centre and General Coordinator of the Forum, was excited for the idea,” he adds, saying they worked on a script using some of her memories and tales that she had heard through her father and her father’s father.

“We had a very, very strong script [of] around 16 pages,” he recalls, adding that as a director he faced a new sort of challenge. Namely, how do you shoot a narrative that requires various points of view without showcasing multiple stories? They had all of six-seven minutes for the entire project and it needed to be filmed in about two weeks. Akef says he had to go back to Al Shamsi and explain that the movie had to be a project steeped in trust and that there could be no going back and forth for approvals. “I only had two days scheduled for the shooting, one day for the colour grading, one day for editing, 1 day for VFX. It was a very tight schedule,” he explains.

Fortunately, he says, the story was one that the emirate wanted to tell. “Honestly, authorities were extremely supportive, because they did understand the value of this, so we had Sharjah Museum supporting us, we had Shurooq (The Sharjah Investment and Development Authority) supporting us, they gave us the venues where we shot these scenes,” he explains.

While they worked on getting the storyline perfect, they also went in search of a cast. And ended up with Emiratis with not much screen experience. “They obviously had to be Emirati, so we're dealing with everyone from the granddaughter, nine, to the grandfather, 75 years old. And there was not enough time to do multiple rehearsals. They came in and had to get it right. (A Zoom meeting is not really a rehearsal.) “The only one with experience was the senior woman – hers was the easiest take,” he says.

Plus, there was the dialect. “It was challenging, you know, making sure that they're speaking the correct Emirati dialect, because even though they are Emirati, there's multiple accents and multiple ways of speaking, and again, we're supposed to be in the olden times,” Akef adds. “With some people we had to go sentence by sentence, which made it an editing nightmare for us.”

But what they may have lacked in expertise, says Akef, they made up for in enthusiasm. “Everyone, no matter how tired, no matter how hard it was recording in this heat... they all sacrificed [comfort] to make it happen.”

There was a lot of fact-checking that went into the making of this movie, says Akef. “We chose a period bracket, pre-union, so it could be [in] 1960, 1965, 1968, so we did a fact check on what type of boats were used at this time, the history of the type of house people lived in, the type of clothes they were wearing. And, of course, we had to stick to the timeline,” he adds.

“We put an international team on this project, using a mix of 3D modelling, traditional VFX, and very modern AI to create a feeling. We actually built all of Sharjah on Blender, a 3D software, and then we had to follow traditional maps that were provided to us by Sharjah Heritage, and then animate it. We used the falcon as the narrator of the story,” he says, speaking of the bird’s-eye view of the city shown on screen.

Al Rawy dives into the essence of what makes a society a society – it’s the people and the intricate weave of emotions that connect them. “We live in a world where friendship has lost a lot of its meaning… friendship meant a lot more in the past, and this is something that strengthens the community and strengthens us as humans. This is something I want people to take from the movie,” he says. Another is how culture is passed down, sometimes through big traditions but mostly through the little things – the short stories of hope, courage, friendship, morality passed down for on generation to the next. “It's very sad when people stray away from culture, they try to become a different international version of themselves, which is nice, but culture always comes first; you need your roots.”

The project didn’t only deliver on one sharp video, says Akef, recalling the teary eyes he saw when it debuted at the 26th Sharjah International Narrator Forum last month. It also “strengthened my faith in Emirati cinema”, he explains. “I think there's a lot more we can do and a lot more we can tell, which I didn't know existed till we shot this movie, you know, there's a lot we can do, and a lot we can show regionally, nationally, and internationally.”

“We have stories,” he stresses, saying now the thing is to showcase them, to take up the mantle of narrator for the nation.