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orn in London to a British

mother and an Emirati ather, Ali’s earliest inuences were Western arts and Arab culture. In termso appearance, his Arab roots are more visible — but in attitude, the suave and handsome Ali is

nothing but cosmopolitan. He switches between a lazy drawl (while talking about his lie andinuences) to animated indignation (when he talks about the ak his city receives). And there is an

air o listless boredom that we’d preer attributing to his age (29) or to the ight he has to rush tocatch in an hour.

Ali caught up with T Qatar when he was in the city to participate in a session at the Doha Tribeca

Film Festival. He set out to make City o Lie, a multilingual lm, to show the heart o Dubai.Considered the ‘rst international Emirati eature lm’, it had a airly long run at the box ofce in

UAE and other Gul states. Though he penned the script in the English, Ali is wellversed in Arabicand Hindi as well, the other two languages o the lm. He thinks and dreams in English, he says but

is greatly inuenced by his culture — the Arab culture. His ather had a large collection o Westernlms that served as odder or his childhood ambition.

“I didn’t get into Arab cinema until airly recently. I am pretty much inue nced by Western lms.That’s what I knew, and those are the standards I aspire to reach...” Using those standards and that

medium he wants to provide a tting retort to the West’s dismissal o Dubai.

city PuLse “The Western media portrays Dubai as a very articial place, like Disneyland. I was just trying to show that that’s ridiculous. You can’t say that to the people who were raised there, who

grew up there, that they live in a ake place. Like any other major city in the world it has bothnegatives and positives.”

However, he is clear that he didn’t set out to make a documentary on Dubai. “All I wanted to dowas show that Dubai was a real place — not necessarily show the grit o the grit — I was giving a very

balanced view o how I see it. Through my eyes. The city I grew up in and what I know o it.”He understands where the criticism stems rom, but doesn’t agree with it. “It’s unortunate that

the people who speak o Dubai in this manner and the Western media, haven’t really visited thecity. It’s the perception o Dubai. I they do visit, then again, they will only stay in the places that

were newly built.“It is dierent or people like us who grew up there — long beore Sheikh Zayed Road became the

16lane motorway it is today, when it just had two lanes, and the World Trade Center was the tallestbuilding then, it’s the shortest now. It ha s grown so rapidly, it makes you eel like you miss old

It’s not dIffIcult to envIsagealI f Mustafa on the sIlver screen,

but he Is certaIn that he Is abetter fIt behInd the caMera,

as a fIlMMaker, a passIonthat took roots when he was

barely nIne years old.

text by vanI saraswathI

alI f. Mustafa

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“Yes, because post 9/11 or even beore that,

we haven’t been depicted very well in either themedia or in lms, as Arabs. So I think it’s almost

our duty to try and change that. We need to tryand counterbalance it with lms we make.

“No, because you don’t have to. As almmaker you make lms you want to make

and tell stories you want to tell. You are notobliged to deend an entire nation, people orreligion. Because you are a lmmaker at the

end o the day — you make lms, you try and

captivate an audience.

“At a personal level, I would like the audience

to leave the hall having learnt something new.So I am right in the middle o it — I want to

deend and I want to entert ain.”On the uture o Khaleeji cinema, he says

there is both nancial and strategic support, buta lot hinges on how the next ew lms are.

“I think we are going to get a lot o support. Alot o people are using my lm as a case study to

try and attempt something new. It will get a loto support i lm number one does well, and

lm numbers two and three do well too...“We are under a lot o 

pressure. I was with this lm.

The next lmmaker, with his...because i his lm doesn’t do

well, then the guy a ter him willhave a problem. Because support

will depend on the success o thelms. The next ew lms have a

task in hand — they really have to

capture an audience, peopleneed to eel comortable about

walking into the theatre to watcha Khaleeji or Emirati lm.”

 With his next venture, Ali saysmarketing will receive a lot

more emphasis. For City o Lie— which had a huge budget by

regional standards — promotion was primarily

viral, with zero budget or marketing. Thoughthat worked well, it will not be the model going

orward.

coMedy, reMaKe... dicaPrio?Hisnext lm would be a comedy — “a difcult genre

to handle, so it’s going to challenging” — inEnglish but based in the Arab world.

His dream project, however, is to remakeMoustapha Akkad’s Mohammed, Messenger o 

God (Arrisallah in Arabic and released as TheMessage in USA) — “an emotional lm” that

inspired him.His other early inuences include George

Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and he says he has just the right script to cast Leonardo DiCaprio

in the lead — “it’s a big lm. And he is a goodactor and would suit the role.”

For now he juggles his eature lms with adlms, because “I can’t make a living with just

eature lms, unless I am making them back toback.”

Back to the cities o his lie, London or Dubai?He says it has to be a 50-50. He sees no

similarities between the two, except that theyare both multicultural.

“But they are not melting pots o culture,because there is no re under the pot.” n

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