I spent time last week with Mohanad Hayal, a talented Iraqi filmmaker, chatting with him in the drawing room of his new home in Baghdad
Filmmaker Mohanad Hayal in Baghdad during a Skype call from his home in Baghdad. On the wall is Uma Thurman and on the right is Yassir, his Arabic-English interpreter in Estonia. Pic/Meenakshi Shedde
I spent time last week with Mohanad Hayal, a talented Iraqi filmmaker, chatting with him in the drawing room of his new home in Baghdad. The wall behind him has a very cool painting of Uma Thurman from the Pulp Fiction poster — where she's lying on her stomach, with a 'Sadhana cut', alluring cleavage, stilettoed feet crossed behind her, and smoking a cigarette (or more). "You like?" he asks. "Great," I nod. He shows me another portrait of Al Pacino in Scarface, painted on the wall opposite.
Filmmaker Mohanad Hayal in Baghdad during a Skype call from his home in Baghdad. On the wall is Uma Thurman and on the right is Yassir, his Arabic-English interpreter in Estonia. Pic/Meenakshi Shedde
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After being bombarded with all those wretched media portrayals of Iraqis, and horrific videos of Americans torturing Iraqis in Abu Ghraib in Baghdad, it is such a pleasure to meet a regular Iraqi guy; he's handsome in a melancholic kind of way. There is something deeply satisfying about how film and culture strike at the root of political ideology and shrill official pronouncements of the "enemy" — much as film and music do between the people of India and Pakistan.
In fact, I am sitting in Brisbane, Australia, along with U-Wei Bin Haji Saari, Malaysian filmmaker — we are both Script Mentors on the Asia Pacific Screen Lab — on Skype with Mohanad Hayal in Baghdad, whose script Haifa Street has been selected by the lab. It is a powerful story of an Iraqi family and friends, who destroy each other, as a consequence of what the US did in Iraq and in Abu Ghraib. The story is enriched by Hayal's complex relationship with the US, where he did many filmmaking workshops; he has made five films, and is currently a freelance war videographer, documenting battles between the Iraqi Army and ISIS. The other filmmaker I am mentoring is Jakeb Anhvu, Australian of Vietnamese origin, who is making a documentary, A Hundred Years of Happiness. The Asia Pacific Screen Lab, organised by the Griffith Film School, Asia Pacific Screen Academy and Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC), is an incubator programme for emerging filmmakers in the Asia-Pacific.
We talk to Hayal via Yassir, his Arabic-English translator, currently in Estonia. It is wonderful to hear a conversation in Iraqi Arabic: even as words like kulli, fijar, mafroub and habib fly thick and fast, I recognise words like mushkil, yani, qatil, maqsad and akhir, peppered with "l'annee derniere" (last year in French), cinema indienne, americain and scenario. I love this 'langosmosis' or osmosis between languages. It will be fascinating to observe what film will emerge from this Iraq-Malaysia-India-Estonia-Australia river of people and cultures. Elsewhere, I have mentored scripts by filmmakers from Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and India, nourished by story-telling streams closer home.
I observe two distinct kinds of story-telling at international film festivals, each valuable in their own way. One is films like Ritesh Batra's The Lunchbox, that have been through script and co-production labs, and are international co-productions, with global audience appeal. The other is local, original story-telling, often rough at the edges, untouched by labs and international funding, that still do well at festivals; these may appeal to audiences at home, but rarely reach a global market. The latter includes films like Nagraj Manjule's Sairat (Marathi), Jayaraj Nair's Ottaal (Malayalam), Kaushik Ganguly's Shobdo (Bengali) and Muthusamy Sakthivel's Maithaanam (Tamil). Each story-telling, in its own way, connects us to our humanity. Shukran to cinema, and especially Mohanad, for helping me be a true jihadi — fighting the war of prejudice within.
Meenakshi Shedde is South Asia Consultant to the Berlin Film Festival, award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. Reach her at meenakshishedde@gmail.com
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