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Q: Will winning awards help promote the documentary? How so?
A: Any award won by the film will be in its artistic balance,
and be proud of the workers in the film, and recognize the great
effort and successful work, and serve the film in terms of
marketing, which is a complex process because it balances the
commercial work and artistic work.
Q: How much money did it cost?
A: The film "a tale of Water, Palm Trees and family" is the
longest film in the UAE,142. Minets, with a high production cost,
because it is a private production, it costed of one million two
hundred and fifty thousand euros, filmed within a year and two
months across UAE, the post production was in Amsterdam and Munich,
it has taken 6 months and was translated into English, French and
Spanish.
Q: How did you finance that?
A:The financing of the film is personal financing, because I
believe in the importance of cinema, and the importance of being in
the UAE an advanced cinema, with high techniques and professionalism
that the world knows and recognizes. It is part of a dream that I
realized today. the film is a realization of the old generation
sacrifice and fatigue, and it is a commandment on neck of the new
generation to know the value of what man has offered here for life.
Q: Where were the locations?
A:Shooting was in all the lands of the UAE we went from the far
north to the south and from the far east to the west, accompanied by
fishermen at dawn, and we ate lunch with the peasants amid the
forest of palm trees,we went to the top of the mountains to see the
stone houses and how the wheat is grown there, we went through the
desert day and night and ate from the people eating. The simple
people gathered with them around the fire in the cold desert night
and drank from their coffee in the morning. It was a beautiful trip
and exiting.
Q: Any bites yet from distributors?
A:Yes, there are local television stations that want to show the
film. We have the largest airline companies, “Al Ittihad” and
“Emirates”, which can be shown during their travels around the
world. There is a”Arabic National Geographic Channel”, but the film
has not yet been commercially shown in cinemas. Maybe on February
2018
Q: What has the feedback been so far?
A:The reactions have been so encouraging that it has been shown
so far in 20 international film festivals in America in three
different festivals: Canada, New Zealand, Norway, France, Germany,
Italy and Spain in Madrid, Barcelona, Indonesia, in Bali, and
Jakarta, India, the UAE in Dubai international film festival and
others. The film is rich in terms of content, cultural
material,cinema photograph and direction.
Q: What was the best part of the project?
A: Was one of the beautiful things that the film estimated to be
captured and documented for older men at the end of their age and
prepare from the old generation, which has experienced a lot of
political and social events, they are the memory of the remaining
homeland.
Q: What was the most challenging?
A: The most difficult thing was how we would perform the rituals
of invoking the jinn or "zar" in the middle of the night in the
middle of the mountains. This is the first time that these rituals
have appeared in the cinema as real scenes. The Dutch team did not
know what was going on? And what happens? And what is the benefit?
And other mysterious questions.
Q: Are you pleased with the overall outcome?
A: Yes, I'm happy with what I did with this beautiful film,
which took part in 20 international film festivals, and won sixteen
different awards: seven awards as best director, best foreign film
twice, best story twice, best content, best film cultural
preservation, and best feature documentary film four awards, It is a
great experience, and a man cannot always do an epic film such as "a
tale of Water, Palm Trees and family".
Q: What are your hopes and dreams for the documentary?
A: I wish the documentary filmmakers to take care of all the
artistic processes, because in the end this is a cinema and this is
a film in the first place. The beautiful idea is not enough if you
do not find professional photography, montage, fine music, sound
design and other technical things that are ignored by many of the
documentary films makers.
Q: How long did it take to complete the documentary?
A: One year and two months shooting and around six months for
post-production and three languages subtitles.
Q: How do you feel to have won the Best Film in the 2017
International Film Festival for Documentary, Short, and Comedy?
A:This is one of the sixteen awards that the film has earned in
roaming the world's cities and festivals, and each award means
something different to me, an emphasis on the importance of this
film, and the aesthetics of film art in it.
Q: Why is these subject (water, palm trees and family) important to
you?
A:As they are the components of civilization in the UAE and the
source of its diverse culture and tolerance, which is a model in the
world where today lives on the land of the UAE 204 nationalities
from around the world in harmony and understanding and tolerance.
Q: Does this film send the message you intended?
A:As I told you first this film recognition of the importance
and the right of the old generations to fatigue and pain and
sacrifice in building a stable life on this land for thousands of
years, a testament to the emergence of the new generation who found
an easy and generous life, not to forget the thanks and recognition
of the grandfathers right.
Q: Why the title "A tale of water, palm trees and family"?
A:That is my story, my life, and my homeland song.
Q: Is there anything in the past happened to you, that make you make
this movie? If yes, what is this?
A: No..
Q: Do you personally know anyone who inspires this documentary?
A:I do not think so.
Q: How many awards has the documentary won?
A: as I told before 16 awards from over the world.
Q: Any unique stories during the making of the documentary?
A:Ah, yes, while filming the bullfighter in the most areas of
the UAE in Fujairah, a huge bull attacked us, and fled from the
defeated bull to the camera and the photographer and director and
some technical team,we leaved the camera alone and we run away of
him, and the camera is the only victim, thanks God.
Q: Are you working on any new projects?
If yes, can you give a glance about it?
A: Yes, there is a film I am editing now in Turkey called "The
Goddess of Time", a philosophical film looking for the dialectics of
man and time, who follows who? Who precedes the other, and who will
have eternity? It is an experimental film of an international nature
in poetic language.
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