DUBAI: So far in 2023, no film has sparked as much interest across the region – or generated as much debate – as Jordanian filmmaker Basel Ghandour’s directorial debut, “The Alleys”. A little more than a month after its release on Netflix, Crime Caper is still the second most popular piece of media on the platform in Jordan, becoming the best received film in Jordan since successfully fending off a conservative campaign against it Is. The 2014 Oscar-nominated period thriller “Thebe”, which Ghandour also wrote.
“For me, the silver lining of that controversy was that so many people came forward and fiercely defended it. Whether he liked the film or not, he defended the idea that the issues we tackle in ‘The Allies’ exist in Jordanian society – it’s a representative piece of art,” Ghandor tells Arab News.
“Our film was not meant to be provocative in any way; It was created to reflect the real world space it represents. But this experience has encouraged me to take more risks in the stories I want to tell—because it proves that our method works,” she continues.
That method was born in the early stages of making “Thebe” 10 years ago. The film, set between present-day Jordan and Saudi Arabia in 1916, follows a young Bedouin boy who is tasked with guiding a group of British soldiers to a Roman well near an Ottoman railway. It was inspired by Sergio Leone’s love of Ghandour’s westerns, and he dreamed of a world in which Jordanian Bedouins acted similarly, contacting his friend Naji Abu Nowar to work with him.
“We did three drafts of the script and they weren’t good enough. It lacked authenticity. It was clearly the work of two writers who lived in the city and were trying to write a story about life in the desert,” Ghandour says.
“We realized that the best thing for us was to go to the Wadi Rum desert where the film is set, live with the local Bedouin tribe, and immerse ourselves in that world. We spent a year there and that’s when the story started.” Became alive
Their efforts turned “Thebe” into a global success, garnering Jordan’s first Oscar nomination and setting Ghandour on a course to eventually direct his first feature, a dream he had harbored since the days when He first fell in love with filmmaking while working on the set of the Academy Award-winning film “The Hurt Locker” in 2008 as a crew member.
However, for “The Allies”, he knew not to repeat the same mistake twice. He wouldn’t try to fit a world he barely knows into a film language he was enamored with. Instead, he learned that man is much more than an aesthetic. His approach was in the spirit of filmmakers like David Simon — the man behind what is often hailed as the best TV show ever of “The Wire” — whose work involved years of research and journalism on the city’s streets. chosen to be featured.
For “The Alleys”, Ghandour wanted to explore the eastern Amman neighborhood of Jabal al Natif, with the help of his friend Mahmoud Abu Faha, who lived there, who eventually became an executive producer on the project, in order to delve deeper into its intricacies. Can go till ,
“The research was a long process and was inspired directly by stories we heard on the street – and the culture of gossip that exists to spread those stories around. Some of the stories we heard were clearly exaggerated , some were blatantly false, so we went about not only listening to every story that we could, but also digging deeper into how true each story was, getting snippets from all these different people who lived in the neighborhood doing, and then discovering the most interesting threads,” says Ghandour.
Ghandour took as much as he could, and would write as he got the idea to fictionalize it all and turn it into a coherent narrative. They looked through draft after draft, making sure to fact-check everything they came up with after every single writing period.
“I’ll put in a narrative, and then I’ll take it back to Mahmoud, and he’ll do it all, as well as try to find parallels to real things he knew or heard. Ghandour says, “When something He’d correct me if I was wrong—he was always my barometer—and then I’d go back and rewrite.” “It was a long process.”
The film eventually became as labyrinthine as the setting that inspired it, following a young man with a secret lover, and his disapproving mother who enlists a gangster to stop the romance with disastrous results. Is. Every detail was, after all, painstakingly stress-tested by the people who knew the area best.
“In the final section, once we had a narrative we were satisfied with, it was about making sure the dialogue was as authentic to Eastern Amman as possible, and that every subtle difference in inflection and language was reflected. I want the film to do well, but if it doesn’t have the seal of approval from the people of that neighborhood, I feel like I’ve failed, says Ghandour. “I had to make sure everyone working on the film from that area could say, ‘This is real. This exists. This resonates. This is something we’re proud of. ‘”
While Ghandour went in with as few preconceptions as possible, he ultimately realized that he had discovered the truth about how the world operates, and ultimately, the more granular his approach got, the more relevant the material. happened.
“This neighborhood functions like a beehive, and that intimacy is both positive and negative. There’s camaraderie, there’s a support system, there’s beautiful energy, but there’s also tension. People put on social masks to project a certain persona.” are, and this is true throughout the Arab world,” he says.
Ghandour is now living in London, and is currently developing a few projects – one set in Palestine, one in Saudi Arabia and another in London. The London film is the one he is currently working hardest on, once again delving deeply into the collaborative process of understanding how a city operates, and the people who navigate it.
“I moved to London because I’m ready for a new chapter in my life. I’m ready to explore new things. And it’s been great getting to know the city now through this new project,” he says. Are. “While it’s too early to know what the next project might be, I’m very excited to see what the future holds.”