The director of the movie “The Representative” Ali Al-Kalthami talks about bringing this genre to the Saudi market – The Hollywood Reporter

Ali Al-Kalthami jokingly asserts that Saudi Television Company, the Saudi production company he co-founded more than 10 years ago – long before the country announced the reopening of cinemas for the first time in 35 years – is currently “the hot thing” in the local area. Film industry.

He’s not entirely wrong.

The first advantage of the company Star It broke Saudi box office records at the start of the year, becoming the most successful local film of all time within two weeks, and would go on to beat most major Hollywood releases (including Barbie). Less than 12 months after the launch of the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah, two of the most popular films are currently being screened Naga And representativeBoth premiered in Toronto. Film screenings were among the first to be sold out.

Suspense and suspense film Naga – Part of Telfaz11’s multi-picture deal with Netflix – the film comes from writer/director Mishal Al-Jisr and tells the story of a girl whose efforts to sneak in on a secret date spiral out of control. representativeMeanwhile, it is a darker comedy set in Riyadh, and follows a delivery man who is unwittingly caught in the illegal part of the city.

Despite being a prolific creator for many years, representative It also marks the directorial debut of Kalthami, who says he has been biding his time, and is helping produce other TV movies from his roster of directors, while quietly developing the project in the background.

“I’m glad I did it this way – it made me wiser, so I can learn from my mistakes and see where the market stands,” he explains from the Red Sea Festival before its opening. representativeLocal premiere on Sunday, December 3.

It’s a strategy Telfaz11 has mastered from the beginning, which is to carefully analyze the cinematic landscape before rushing into production of films (despite being one of the more established companies when cinemas reopened in 2018, their first release didn’t come until 5 years later).

Al-Kalthami explains representative It represents part of the next phase of the company’s strategy to “unleash new potential” for a still-young market with a genre that has not yet been tested.

Until now, Telfaz11 has been known – and celebrated – for its comedies (it made its name by doing comedy shows on YouTube), and most Arabic-language releases have stuck to humor. but representative It breaks from this template with something darker.

“I hope we open up a new demographic, and that people who may have lost faith that this type of film isn’t being cared for will find something in this,” he says. “We want to be a studio for filmmakers who want to tell a story that might be outside the norm. We want to break the norm and go beyond it – we want to be known as a studio that makes genres and doesn’t stick to one thing.

representative This is also part of the effort to position Telfaz11 internationally, gaining recognition from film festivals like Toronto and seeing their films travel around the world. While Netflix is ​​releasing Naga, Mandoob is being shopped by MPM Premium, with THR understanding that some territories have already been captured (in Saudi Arabia, it’s being released by Front Row Arabia, which helped deliver record results for Sattar).

As a Saudi, he has witnessed the dramatic changes that his country has witnessed over the past few years. representative It is also something personal for Al-Kathami, and its events take place in the present day in his city of Riyadh.

“We go to the cinema all the time and see films that show places, behaviors and belief systems in stories that reflect the time in which the film was made, and I think that’s what I was thinking about while making this film,” he says. “I know for a fact that Saudi Arabia will be completely transformed in the next ten years. The film thus becomes a reference point. I don’t say that representative It is a document of reality, it is a reference to reality and derived from reality.

reaction to representative In Toronto – her first contact with an audience – it far exceeded what Al-Kalthami expected, especially for a local film. He remembers looking out into the audience and seeing a sea of ​​“white faces and blond hair,” and thinking “Oh my God, this isn’t even us remotely — will they know what the story is?”

But they did.

“They got the humour, they got the irony, they got the character, they got the real essence of the genre,” he says, adding that there is also “huge interest” from people in seeing a Saudi film, perhaps for its own sake. The first time (and a story that many might not expect to come from the country). By the time of its second screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, word had spread and a younger audience had come, some of whom Al-Kalthami says had lived in Saudi Arabia as children, and noticed things in the film they never thought anyone outside the country would notice.

Following her appearance in Toronto, Telfaz11 used her power with social media to try to create a conversation around her representative Before its debut in Saudi Arabia at the Red Sea Film Festival and its local release, which helps explain its subject matter and why it exists in a different genre that fans may be familiar with.

“The goal was to control expectations or even direct expectations,” he says. “I was afraid people might not be interested in this genre, but it’s been the opposite. That’s the reaction we’ve gotten from people. It’s like, ‘Thank you, we’ve been waiting for something like this.’ It was kind of a bet I made when choosing This movie, but it kind of paid off.