DUBAI: After years of shuttered cinemas and a languishing local film industry, Sudanese director Amjad Abu Alala’s debut feature film, “You will die at 20,” is shaking things up both at home and across the world.
Mounted with almost ethereal sensitivity with color tones of the Sudanese landscape, the movie explores the dilemma of a family whose child may not live beyond 20, in a land where blind beliefs overwhelm logic and reason.
Abu Alala spoke to Arab News about his $700,000 film, which premiered at the 2019 Venice Film Festival, winning the Lion of the Future Award, and also screened at the El-Gouna Film Festival, where it clinched the Golden Star for best narrative feature.
“We knew while making the film that it was a big project,” Abu Alala said. “We met very important producers and everyone was always excited about the idea and the film, so we kind of expected the success, but it was more than what we expected.”
The director, who was born and raised in Dubai, was in search of a story that not only the Sudanese people would relate to, but the whole world. After screening the movie at four festivals in India, he said: “Indian producers are now asking for the rights to the story to remake it.”
It was “coincidence” that the movie was shot during the revolution in Sudan, and among the challenges the crew faced was “taking permission from the government to shoot and to fly (the crew and the equipment) from France, Egypt, and Lebanon to Sudan.”
The moviemakers flew in four tons of equipment from Cairo. “There was no cinema in Sudan, so we faced (challenges) building the industry from scratch to do one shot,” Abu Alala said.
Under former leader Omar Al-Bashir, many cinemas were closed and the local film industry was severely hampered by a US trade embargo and a general lack of freedom in filmmaking.
The movie, which was first released in Tunisian cinemas, is now showing at Cinema Akil in Dubai until Jan. 17. In February, it will be released in French cinemas and will soon be screened in Serbia, Switzerland, London, and, of course, Sudan.
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