The private cinema in Majid Al Ansari's Dubai home has a wall covered from floor to ceiling with Blu-rays. Opposite, a two-metre screen dominates the room, turning the space into both a theatre and an archive.
The Emirati filmmaker has spent years meticulously building the space – a childhood dream realised. Even the speakers, he insists, are of a higher quality than those in many premium public cinemas. His collection now numbers in the thousands, a mix of cult classics, Korean thrillers, art house gems and Hollywood blockbusters. Whenever he is in Southeast Asia, he makes time to stop off in Seoul to visit a shop known for its rare editions – discs he is intent on adding to his ever-growing archive.
Pulling one case from the shelf, he points to Wong Kar-wai’s 2046, a film he watched obsessively nine times before he began to enjoy it. Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing comes up too, a film he found so seismic he wasn’t sure how he could make more stories in its wake. More recent films such as Bring Her Back and Oddity are part of the endless conversation he carries on with cinema – as much a fan as a filmmaker.
Al Ansari's cinephile passion has always fuelled his work. But it has been 10 years since his last feature-length directorial effort. In the meantime, he has cut his teeth as a producer – on films such as Hwjn and Scales – and as a television director on Netflix’s Paranormal and Starzplay’s Kaboos.
Quietly, though, he has been not only building this personal monument to his passion, but also shaping himself into the filmmaker he always knew he could be.
“I had to find my joy again,” Al Ansari tells The National. “Even when I am in the producer's chair, I don’t have the joy as much as directing.”
On Saturday, Al Ansari returns to the big screen with Hoba, called The Vile in the English-speaking world, which will have its world premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. It's the same festival where he unveiled his acclaimed debut Zinzana nearly a decade ago.
His first film was the product of remarkable tenacity. When we last spoke ahead of Zinzana’s Dubai premiere in 2015, Al Ansari was closer to the boyish intern he had been when he first convinced Image Nation Abu Dhabi to let him direct. He discovered the script for Zinzana on The Black List and, armed with an 18-page presentation, pitched himself to lead the project. His vision was so persuasive that the studio fast-tracked the film, making him the first Image Nation intern to graduate directly to the director’s chair.
Back then, he was vocal about his mission – he wanted to prove that Arab cinema could entertain without carrying the burden of politics. “In London, some filmmakers asked me: ‘What does this character represent – Israel? Palestine?’” he told me in 2015. “I said: 'Nope! It’s art.' You can’t go to an artist and ask them why. Sometimes you just want to escape.”
He also shared the story of how he dragged his mother to see Ali Mostafa’s City of Life at the Dubai International Film Festival. She was sceptical – why watch an Emirati film when she could see Mel Gibson or Denzel Washington instead? By the end, she was in tears. “When am I going to see your name up there?” she asked her son. That moment lit the fire that produced Zinzana.
If Zinzana was a stylish exercise in suspense, Hoba is something more intimate. The film tells the story of Amani, a wife and mother whose life unravels after her husband takes a second wife, only for something darker to begin invading the home.
Through this narrative, Al Ansari was trying to do the same thing that a lot of his favourite horror films do: take a common superstition and make it manifest. “People often say that the second wife put a spell on the husband. I wanted to make that literal,” he says,
For Al Ansari, the subject matter was uniquely difficult. He co-wrote the film, which meant he was far closer to the material than before. “I usually have no problem killing my favourite shots or scenes,” he says. “But with Hoba, I had to force myself to step away, sometimes for weeks, so I could come back and see it with fresh eyes.”
That distance was vital. The film went through multiple versions – cuts as short as 85 minutes, others stretching close to two hours – as he tried to shape the most powerful experience for an audience.
“It wasn’t about the time, it was about the feeling,” he says. “How does it feel to sit in the theatre? What lingers when you leave? That’s what I was chasing.”
It wasn't a lone pursuit. Hoba is produced by Image Nation in partnership with Spooky Pictures, the Los Angeles company behind the 2022 horror-mystery Barbarian – which has helped the film receive international theatrical distribution deals, one of the first Emirati films to do so. Working with horror veterans Steven Schneider and Roy Lee gave Al Ansari fresh perspective.
“Sometimes one note can change everything,” he says. “Steven looked at a scene and said: 'Why don’t you take out those two cuts?' It was tiny, but it shifted the trajectory of the film.”
Even with seasoned horror producers in his corner, Al Ansari was determined to keep the story rooted in Gulf reality. That was something Schneider supported. Al Ansari recalls how he didn’t just impose notes, but also asked questions: “He said: 'Walk me through what the culture is. How does polygamy work? How does this dynamic play out?'”
Al Ansari acknowledges the cultural differences could create potential issues among foreign viewers. In one scene, the husband tells his wife she should be grateful he even told her about his second marriage. To a western audience, the line may sound almost absurd, but Al Ansari points out that in the Gulf it reflects a very real dynamic. “It’s something you hear here all the time,” he says. In local terms, the remark is meant to suggest a kind of honesty – that it is better to admit such a decision directly than to keep it secret, as sometimes happens.
Moments like this, he insists, are what give the film its power. They may unsettle some, but they anchor the horror in lived experience. “I had to trust that honesty would resonate, even if it sounds strange outside the region,” he says.
That stance reflects how Al Ansari himself has changed. In 2015, he was the young outsider trying to prove himself. Ten years on, he is a husband, father and production company executive. He tinkers with his films while his children swim in the pool. His concerns have evolved, as has his art, and his voice has grown even more confident.
Part of the struggle now is balancing the man he has become with the child inside him who fell in love with cinema in the first place – the kid who was never the same after he'd been passed a bootleg of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, which became a sensation in his high school after a Korean transfer student brought it to town.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’ve lost that passion,” he admits. “But then one film comes along and I realise it’s still there – that’s what keeps me going.”
Al Ansari already has his eye on pushing the horror genre further. He speaks with relish about going “full blood” in his next project, citing Saw and Australian cult classic The Loved Ones as inspirations.
“I don’t want to repeat myself,” he says. “Hoba is emotional and intimate. Next time, I want to push boundaries with gore – but always with our characters, our voices, our culture.”
In the meantime, The Vile is poised to become the first breakout Emirati hit globally – with Deadline reporting that it has been picked up for distribution in the US, the first film from the UAE to do so. It will also screen at the London Film Festival next month, before its UAE theatrical release just before Halloween.
But even after endless edits, the most important audience members have yet to see Hoba: his own family, including his wife, his children and even his mother – the person who once demanded to know when she would see his name on a cinema screen. He's held off on that moment deliberately until, after a decade in the making, his most personal story yet is screening in the most packed cinema he can find.
“I want them to experience it in the theatre, with everyone else,” he says. “That’s the moment I’m waiting for.”
Hoba is being released in UAE cinemas on October 30
