A new take on Arab cinema
Telling stories deeply connected toEmirati culture, Abdulla Al Kaabi is winning international recognition. The young filmmaker is just getting started on his big ambitions.
By Nasri Atallah
Photographs By Moez Achour
Styled by Jade L. Chilton
I have been looking forward to meeting Abdulla Al Kaabi, and it’s not just because he’s an award-winning filmmaker. Photos of his home in Architectural Digest and Harper’s Bazaar look like the kind of maximalist art-filled place I dream of. As I marvel at the furniture and artwork at the Jumeirah address, he tells me this is a temporary place while his actual home undergoes work. He could have fooled me. It feels lived in and welcoming, filled with stories and personal touches. The lighting is dim. The vibe is serene. Al Kaabi offers me a fresh coconut to drink from as we sit down to talk at the dinner table. He is relaxed in a shirt and shorts.
I’ve caught him on the eve of a trip abroad. He’s heading to the Cannes Film Festival as the ambassador for French luxury brand Cartier and for meetings around his upcoming film, Camel Tears, which is in development.
“The script is done,” he says. “It’s a love story between a Bedouin and his camel. I want to explore interspecies romance. It exists between humans and animals in Bedouin culture. A Bedouin would die for his camel and the camel would do the same. In today’s modern society we forgot the importance of camels. They got replaced.”
I volunteer that the Land Cruiser might be the culprit. We laugh. I feel lucky to be ushered straight into Al Kaabi’s universe.
“It’s an homage to this animal that made life possible here. If you were around 100 years ago and you met a Bedouin, a camel was an extension of his body. If that animal dies, he dies, too. It’s his companion, food supply, transport, everything. Some of them live up to 50 years and they used to plan them to be born with the Bedouin.” The film is presented as a stage play, a story within a story, told through the contemporary life of an Emirati woman who is an experimental theatre director putting on a play about a Bedouin.
“I feel like I still get educated in Sharjah. Whenever I’m bored or I need nourishment, I drive to see the exhibitions over there. It’s mind-blowing to get those world-class exhibitions. I feel quite fortunate for that.”
Jacket and top by Mr. Porter; Trousers by Paul Smith.
“There’s an immense generational gap between modern-day Emiratis and the generation just before them,” Al Kaabi says. “The circumstances are so different. I want to explore the interplay between those two generations.”
He has been exploring societal gaps since his 2016 debut feature, Only Men Go to the Grave. “Cinema is very different from any other form of media. You invest into watching a film. You come with a state of mind, coming there to open ideas, to see something new,” he says. “That’s what I did with Only Men Go to the Grave. It was controversial. It discussed cross-dressing, sectarian love, alternative love. It was a story of a family and its secrets.”
The film was well received. It was screened at major festivals and took home a prize at the Dubai Film Festival in 2016, which came as a surprise to Al Kaabi. His little film had been a self-financed labour of love.
Camel Tears is less independent, with a producer and financing attached. “I’m on new ground,” he admits. “It’s a dance. Half of the job is how well you connect with the people involved in the project. A film is a collective piece of art. You have to honour that.
“I’m approaching the film with bigger hopes,” he continues. “I’m hoping it reaches new heights, I have big aspirations for it. It’s been almost three years since I started writing the film in Los Angeles in a workshop at USC [University of Southern California].”
The script already won a prize at the Sharjah Film Platform in 2021, selected from a crop of 100. “That was a big push for me. I’m getting a lot of support from Sharjah Art Foundation. They’re fantastic,” Al Kaabi says. “We’re going to shoot it completely in Sharjah. The script naturally takes place there. We’re also getting support from Shams [Sharjah Media City] and ADMAF [Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation].”
Turtleneck, trousers, hat all by Loro Piana.
Al Kaabi’s stories explore the social issues he sees around him, but he is also invested in an ecosystem that can produce peers. When we discuss the lack of a major film festival, he suggests thinking even bigger, setting up a film institute. “In a country with 200-plus nationalities, imagine the stories going on here. The perspective we have is so unique. If you see what artists are doing in the UAE, it’s great. In film we can do the same.”
He sees a gap, with European funds ignoring stories from UAE filmmakers (Levant and North African films fare better) and an expectation from Arab audiences that independent films should only be one way, which I understood to mean either miserable or slapstick. “In France, cinema is a lifestyle. It’s much more than entertainment. And we lack that in the Arab world,” Al Kaabi says. He would know. He completed his studies in France, and his first short film, The Philosopher, featured legendary actor Jean Reno.
Al Kaabi also makes commercial films through his production company, El Booma Films. I ask him about the company’s mascot, the owl. Various artworks in the dining room feature the nocturnal bird. “Growing up in Fujairah, we had a huge garden. At night I would always see owls,” he explains. “My siblings would get freaked out. They hated it. But I was amazed by it. I loved the idea that we had very different strong emotions to the same thing.” This seems like a through-line in Al Kaabi’s work, looking at the same thing as those around him but having a fundamentally different reaction.
Blazer, shirt and trousers by Gucci.
He describes an idyllic childhood in Fujairah. “The nature was beautiful. Rock mountains, the Gulf of Oman, the Indian Ocean beyond. I lived a very quiet life growing up. I have seven siblings and a large extended family. Life was very family oriented. I went to a tiny school. Just 200 students from grade one to 12. We spent most of our time outside in my grandfather’s palm farm. It was a beautiful life.” It sounds like the ancestral stories he is looking to connect to through film, and a world away from contemporary Dubai, where we are sitting. “There was a quietness growing up,” he says.
While his emotional roots are in Fujairah, his cultural roots are in Sharjah, where he studied at the American University. “I feel like I still get educated in Sharjah. Whenever I’m bored or I need nourishment, I drive to see the exhibitions over there. It’s mind-blowing to get those world-class exhibitions. I feel quite fortunate for that.”
He will be doing some educating of his own soon. He recently completed a commission to create a film for Dubai’s new maritime-focused museum. It tells the story of a young boy dreaming of becoming a pearl diver in 1920s Dubai. It’s an ambitious 360-degree experience, sprawling across eight screens. “It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had in this profession. I can’t wait to screen it,” he says. It sounds thematically linked to Camel Tears. “Yes, of course, I was in that kind of world already. I worked with a local producer, local art director, and local theatre actors. It was an introductory foundation to Camel Tears, without me knowing it.”
I ask him what a dream year looks like, five or 10 years into the future. “I dream of winning an Oscar, a Palme d’Or, a Golden Bear. I have my eyes set on the big prize. I will not stop until I reach that. I like to set goals and I like to achieve them, both in my career and personal life,” he reveals with refreshing candour.
For now, we are sitting amongst his boxes of art and memories. Al Kaabi is a creator but he’s also a builder. Even though the moment is ripe for making films and seeking personal success, there is the sense that it is also an auspicious time to build something beyond oneself. “It’s an interesting time to be here,” he says of the Emirates. “Everyone’s building something. We’re all part of the process of making something. It’s tangible and inspiring. I’m happy to be here.”
