Direct from the heart: An interview with Emirati filmmaker Ali Mostafa

Gulf News

Direct from the heart: An interview with Emirati filmmaker Ali Mostafa. Gulf News sits down with Emirati filmmaker Ali Mostafa to find out about his lifelong passion for movies, his early beginnings and his future plans. See more at: http://gulfnews.com/gntv

Transcript

00:00This is to you. I swear your face is going to win us the account. Cut.

00:16I was fascinated about filmmaking from a very early age. And you know, that's how it started.

00:25It started from taking my parents' camera and filming my toys, shooting with my friends.

00:31By the time I was 15, 16, still shooting stuff, I think my parents at that point realized

00:37that this is what he's going to do. But before graduating from high school, I wanted to start

00:47working. I wanted to start making my own money. Because most of my friends at the time were

00:5110 years older than me, and they were all working. So I thought to approach my mother.

00:57She had an events company with a trade license for interior design. I said, since you have

01:02this trade license, let me try and set up a division in your company that I can run

01:07for interior design, even though I had no qualifications whatsoever. And my first job

01:11actually was my sister's wedding stage. I designed her wedding stage. And I remember

01:16asking what she would have liked as a theme. She said a secret garden theme. So I designed

01:22this secret garden theme, and we had obviously the people there in Blooms to help build this

01:28wedding stage. And that's how it started, because it started from word of mouth. Because

01:31mashallah, I have quite a large family, and the people who attended the wedding saw the

01:36wedding stage, and then they asked who had done it. I said my brother, he started to

01:39get into this, and that's how it started. And for about a year and a half, that's all

01:44I was doing, was doing wedding stages, which was very lucrative. But again, obviously filmmaking

01:50was something that I definitely wanted to continue doing. And I had remembered that

01:56I said, you know what, I think it's time that I should apply for a film school to really

01:59understand how to make films. Because what I was doing was just making films from how

02:04I imagined you would make films. I knew it wasn't the right way. So I started to look

02:09into film schools, and I did my research online, asked people who had been to film

02:18schools, checked New York, LA, and then I found this one in London, called the London

02:24Film School. It was actually the most acclaimed film school from the research that I had done.

02:29Because it's exactly what I wanted to do. It was strictly filmmaking. There was very

02:35little theory. It was practical. And that's what I wanted. But the problem was that that

02:43school was a master's course. And I had graduated from high school, getting into business, and

02:50set up this division, which became quite successful, but not continued, not gone to college for

02:58a bachelor's. But what had happened was that they had a criteria. Either you have a film

03:06course, or you have a bachelor's, or you have the experience. So what I had done is, with

03:10the help of my mother, created this portfolio of all the work that I had done, which was

03:18actually really thick, for the year and a half that I was working. And we had submitted

03:23that with the other stuff that we needed to submit, like a short film, or a three-minute

03:27script, a storyboard that I had drawn, a critique on a film. And we had submitted that as a

03:34package. And we had submitted that whole design as part of filmmaking, which was production

03:41design, art direction, which is pretty much the same thing. Building sets and wedding

03:46stages, it's almost the same thing. And they had accepted me to do a master's on that.

03:53You know what? With all honesty, City of Life is now a couple of years old. I've done it,

03:58I've made it, I've experienced all of what I've had to experience. But City of Life was

04:04definitely not an easy film to make. At one point, actually, it got stopped, on many occasions,

04:09actually. But I don't know if I want to go into talking about that, because I've actually

04:14mentioned it quite a bit in the press. But I feel it's unnecessary to keep going back

04:19on what I had struggled to make City of Life, because now, alhamdulillah, we've reached

04:23a stage in the film industry where there is support. We have now a Dubai Film and TV Commission.

04:28There's no need for me to go back and talk about the struggle of trying to achieve a

04:33film industry here, when it's actually now being achieved. I'd rather be known as a filmmaker,

04:41not the person who just made City of Life. I want to continue making films for the rest

04:44of my life. But I'm very proud of that movie, because of what it managed to achieve, for

04:52myself, but also for the industry. I strongly believe that had this film not been made,

05:00where we are today in the film industry would be two years ahead of us, in front of us.

05:07We would not have reached that stage yet. I strongly believe that. Every movie that

05:11I do, its quality is going to get better. I mean, every day you're learning as a filmmaker.

05:17I mean, if your films are not improving with each film that you make, then there must be

05:21something going wrong. What goes through my mind is, okay, am I choosing the right film

05:26for my second feature? Is this the right one I want to do? And I said, you know what, I'm

05:30just going to do it anyway, because if I wait another year, it's going to be three years

05:33in City of Life. The project's in front of me. I think it's going to be fun. Try and

05:40get as many films as... I would like to be making a film a year, if I could.

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