Watermelon Pictures, a Palestinian-owned film production and distribution company, was in the works long before Israel began its attack on Gaza. But it was just an idea.
As war broke out, and depictions of Palestinians became increasingly warped in international coverage of the conflict, there was an urgent need to challenge western narratives. It became all the more apparent that a dedicated platform was necessary to authentically represent Palestinians.
“In a way, it [Watermelon Pictures] was born out of what happened on October 7, in that it sparked an idea that had been around for a long time,” Alana Hadid, the group’s creative director, said during a recent panel session at the Amman International Film Festival.
Watermelon Pictures was founded in April by brothers Badie and Hamza Ali, executive vice presidents of the Chicago-based MPI Media Group, who had long envisioned a platform that celebrated Palestinian culture and identity.
“The Ali brothers realised that a project that they had been kind of working on for a long time needed to happen now,” Hadid, who is also the older half-sister of models Bella and Gigi Hadid, said.
The dehumanisation of Palestinians and Arabs in western media is not a novel trend, she added. Yet, the momentum it has garnered over the past eight months may have greased the rails of destruction that has caused a harrowing amount of deaths, which the Lancet medical journal estimates could be as high as 186,000.
"The soft power of western entertainment is important,” Hadid said via Zoom. “The reason why Arabs have been looked at as the bad guys is because it's been normalised within western entertainment. This translates into how people can get away with things like what’s happening in Gaza.”
“Not only are we trying to change the narrative within entertainment but, subsequently, that power of changing that narrative and normalising that narrative will eventually have a larger impact on the way that people see it, and the way that they come out in protest or vote or stand up to their governments in order to protect people that they feel deserve protection.”
Producing and distributing
The film industry is instrumental in shaping the political views of the public, and one of the most prominent organisations to acknowledge this potential was the CIA, Hadid noted. “There's a reason why the CIA had an office in Hollywood. It was important to them to make sure that their narrative was told in a way that made audiences feel that [America's] military industrial complexes were the good guys,” Hadid said.
Because of the US' long-standing support for Israel, Palestine has found itself a constant target of such propaganda campaigns, according to Palestinian filmmaker Munir Atalla, who is the head of production and acquisitions at Watermelon Pictures.
“We're one of the most propagandised-about people in the world,” said Atalla. “There's more money spent making propaganda about Palestinians than the GDP of a small nation. It's understandable that so much of what we make is trying to dispel that propaganda.”
However, as much as Watermelon Pictures is dedicated to challenging western preconceptions, the company is even more keen on championing films that cater directly to the community of Arabs and Palestinians. “We want to be making films that are going to energise our own community,” Attala added. He also noted that Watermelon Pictures does not intend to “dictate what films should look like or what films to make".
He added: “A lot of the films that we've already taken and distributed are things that we could have never even conceived of."
While the company’s production and financing arm is eager to support new projects, Atalla notes distributing existing projects is also vital, as that is the hill that many great Palestine-centric films have stalled on.
“Distribution has so often in the industry been kind of the wall that so many of our films hit, and any really politically radical or ambitious projects,” Atalla said. Distribution companies in the industry are often run by corporations "that don't like to go against the grain", he added, or by "people who are profiting from the current system and often aligned with it".
Watermelon Pictures benefits by being within the ecosystem of MPI Media Group, which has almost 50 years of experience producing and distributing films in North America. He said they are "very lucky" to have a company that is willing to put "all of their financial and political capital" behind a Palestinian label. He added: “It started off with us thinking that we would just take a few Palestinian films. There are so many great movies out each year that are produced, but then they're never taken to market, because that's the role of a distribution company."
He said it's important to get films into theatres using relationships with booking agents, as well as contracts and deals that already exist between distribution companies, to "bypass the gatekeepers of the industry".
The catalogue
Watermelon Pictures’ debut title was Walled Off, which was released in May. The documentary is directed by Vin Arfuso and focuses on The Walled Off Hotel, a Palestinian-managed boutique in Bethlehem that is financed and designed by street artist Banksy. Through its narrative, the film delves into the daily realities of the Palestinian residents and highlights the importance of creative resistance as a form of protest.
The movie is co-produced by Hadid’s brother, American-Palestinian model and musician Anwar Hadid, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and Kweku Mandela, grandson of former South African president Nelson Mandela.
The company has since acquired more titles, including the Darin Sallam-directed Farha and Israelism. The latter is a documentary directed by Erin Axelman and Sam Eilertsen and tells the story of two young American Jews who come to question the narratives they were raised under when they witness how Israel treats Palestinians.
“Now that we've started releasing films, we're seeing what's effective,” Atalla said. “We're seeing what works. We're starting to understand and sort of nurture new audiences for our stories and our content.”
Strategy for mass appeal
Atalla is clear that the company’s intent is not just to make arthouse films. Rather, the aim is to make engrossing and entertaining titles that have wide-reaching potential. “It’s going to be politically uncompromising, of course, but it's also going to be entertaining and reach a mass market audience,” he said. “We don't want to be making films that are sidelined, or only exist in a small arthouse space or are preaching to the choir. We want to go beyond that.”
It is partly for this reason that Watermelon Pictures made its debut with Walled Off. The documentary began filming in 2018, years before the current conflict. It was made by an international crew and seemed ripe for mass appeal, given its subject matter.
“I always say it's the most digestible documentary for Gen Z especially,” Hadid said. “It shifts between stories very quickly. It has kind of a social media feel to it. But the information is so important. It centres around the Walled Off Hotel, Banksy’s hotel in Bethlehem. People have always asked Vin: ‘Why Banksy?’ He said: ‘Because I knew that western audiences would pay attention to a documentary about Banksy and not necessarily about Palestine.'”
Hadid also said while it was pivotal to highlight the tragedies and the suffering that Palestinians are being subjected to by Israel, it was also important to highlight the full spectrum of the Palestinian experience.
"We want to make sure that our community is represented correctly, with all the spectrum of what an Arab human is,” she said. “We’re sad, we’re happy, we’re in love. We have all these things that everyone else has in the world, and we want to show that as well.”
Atalla echoed the sentiment, saying it was important to be strategic about conveying the spectrum of Palestinian experiences, especially when considering mass reach.
“The problem is, it's not that easy to get people to sit down for a lesson. Nobody wants to feel like they're being condescended to, or even educated,” he said.
“We want our struggle and the honest reality of our people and our history to be central to everything that we do. But if we approach it through a sports documentary, then why not? That allows us to reach new audiences. If we do it through an animated children's movie that gives both our children something to celebrate while also educating new generations about our culture, then that's a victory for us as well.”
Atalla said it is important to not exhaust all efforts in distributing titles just in the West, especially as those “power structures are never going to benefit us".
“We should be looking instead to our allies in South Africa, in East Asia, in the populations of other Arab countries,” he said. In identifying an ideal model, Atalla highlighted South Korea, pointing out how the country has become a powerhouse in cultural production, hinting that Palestine could be the same.
Hadid added that investment was important to achieving this goal. “There's a lot of emphasis right now on on boycotting and divesting," she said. "That is extremely important. But we also need to think about investing, and where we are investing our attention and our funds.”
