| | Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival | | Actor Nadim Sawalha and the children cast in a scene. |
|
Park City, Utah - Ohio State is the largest school in the country, yet there is no film school. The last version of it, the Department of Photography and Cinema, was disbanded in 1995, eight months after Amin Matalqa started at OSU. With no alternative schools in mind and no desire to go anywhere else, Matalqa bounced around for a while before deciding on a degree in marketing.
"I went on to make sketches with my friends but I gave up on the idea of being a filmmaker," he said.
Ten years after graduating from OSU, Matalqa has revived his dream and his first feature film, "Captain Abu Raed," made its American debut at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
But this is no ordinary Sundance film.
Not only is "Captain Abu Raed" the first professional feature film to come out of Matalqa's native Jordan, it is already winning awards. Just days after The Lantern sat down with him, Matalqa's film walked away from Sundance with the World Cinema Audience Award. Not bad for a group of filmmakers who didn't know how good their film was until its debut at the Dubai International Film Festival in December.
"We got a standing ovation and a major response which included two very positive reviews," Matalqa said. "Until then, people didn't know if it was going to live up to the hype (in the Jordanian media)."
| | Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival | | Writer/director Amin Matalqa. |
|
It was a long journey from OSU to Sundance for Matalqa. After moving to Los Angeles he worked in telecommunications by day while making short films and writing scripts at night. His big break came when a series of his films, some of which were Jordanian and some that were American, were showcased by the Jordan Royal Film Commission to a stunned audience. After that, "Raed" producer David Pritchard suggested to Matalqa that he write a feature-length script set in Jordan.
"(He said it should be) something that Charlie Chaplin or Roberto Benigni would act in," Matalqa said.
From there, "Raed" started to become a reality. The film is about a janitor who finds an airline captain's hat and becomes interesting to his neighbors, because they think he is a captain.
"It's about people connecting with each other," Matalqa said. "It's about how people can step outside their boundaries and make a difference in each others' lives.
One of the biggest challenges for Matalqa was finding a cast of native Jordanians in a country without a film industry. Luckily, the choice for the title character was obvious. Matalqa chose Nadim Sawalha, a veteran British-trained Jordanian known for his roles in "The Return of the Pink Panther" and "Syriana." Matalqa had met Sawalha at age 16, when his pilot father flew Sawalha to a movie set and never pictured anyone else in the role.
"I called him and asked him to consider the script," Matalqa said. "He loved it."
Once Sawalha was on board, the real challenge became finding a supporting cast. Matalqa turned to Rana Sultan, famous in Jordan as a talk show host, for the leading female role of Nour. Sultan had never acted in a dramatic role before.
"Amin's mother used to watch my weekend morning show," Sultan said. "She told Amin about me and he found my pictures on the Internet. He called me and I read the script and fell in love with it."
Matalqa said the film was funded by private investors in Jordan, but it also had the backing of the government and the media. The first people mentioned in the special thanks are King Abdullah II and Queen Rania of Jordan.
"It's really been huge buzz," Matalqa said. "It has inspired people to become filmmakers (in Jordan)."
Matalqa said he is currently writing a script for a different film with the same cast and also has an American film on his radar after that.
"When I make an American film my first instinct would be to make something suspenseful and funny at the same time," Matalqa said. When asked why, he simply said "I grew up on Spielberg."
"Raed" was shot during a period of a month, but a short shooting schedule was further complicated by much of the crew being from the U.S.
"There was no possibility to re-shoot," Matalqa said. "(However,) truly it was better than I imagined."
Sultan is excited by the possibility of working with Matalqa and the cast of "Raed" again.
"It was one of the most amazing experiences I've had," he said. "We were all like a family."
"Captain Abu Raed" is currently working toward American distribution and Matalqa said he hopes to show it in Columbus later in 2008.
Pat Devers can be reached at devers.4@osu.edu.
2008 Woodie Awards
Be the first to comment on this story