Sally El Hosaini believes she may be breaking ground with her first feature film, a story about two brothers living in the Hackney area of London, where the lures of youth, culture and crime are strong.
"You rarely see any Arab characters in British films," said the 35-year-old Welsh-Egyptian filmmaker. "To my knowledge, this is one of the first.
"We have a lot of films that are about the British Asian experience, rather than explicitly Arab. Usually the Arabs are either terrorists or bad guys, and that's how we're used to seeing them.
"But because I was exploring this in a much more three-dimensional way, it didn't matter where they were from, they're just people," she said.
Al Hosaini was speaking at the Sundance Film Festival as she prepared to premiere My Brother the Devil in Park City, Utah. The film went on to win the cinematography award in the World Cinema Dramatic Feature category before the festival wrapped on Sunday.
Her feature debut is about two brothers, Rashid (James Floyd) and Mohammed, or Mo (Fady El Sayed). Their father is a bus conductor. Rashid sells drugs with a local gang and puts the money that he earns in his mother's purse. Mo idolises his older brother. El Hosaini filmed last summer in Hackney, where she has lived for the past decade. Events beyond her control gave her Anglo-Egyptian story added drama.
"We shot in July, August and September last summer," she said. "It was quite crazy because the Hackney riots broke out when we were testing the camera. Suddenly, there were gangs of youths smashing windows in shops, all the streets were closed down, helicopters were in the sky.
"It felt like Baghdad," she said. "I went to Baghdad to do some documentaries previously, and that's what it reminded me of. I said, 'Oh, my God, Hackney's just become Baghdad'.
"A lot of the kids I knew in Hackney who were part of the project were also involved in the riots. It made me feel a real sense of urgency, thinking that this film has to come out, a film that's honest about their lives and the pressures they face, the growing pains for teenagers today."
El Hosaini never went to film school. The protests offered a crash-course in improvisation. "There was a rule that you weren't allowed to shoot on the streets of London all summer. We had to do a lot of last-minute rewrites. We had to think on our feet. It didn't bother me too much. In that sense, the script is just a blueprint of an approximation of the story. Really, a script is just to get money. Then you actually get there on the ground and things happen and you see what's available and in front of you, and you end up going with it."
A ban on filming fights outdoors forced the filmmakers inside, and eventually out of the neighbourhood, to leafy Wimbledon a world away. "Our sound stage had last been an English country village," she said. "Our production designer turned it into Hackney in a day."
El Hosaini, who hasn't been back to Egypt since protests broke out in Cairo a year ago, stressed that the film's story isn't autobiographical. "It comes from a lot of different places, and it's completely fiction."
Screenings of My Brother the Devil at Sundance were sold out with waiting lists - indicating that word of mouth was strong.
"Questions after the film have been about identity and the immigration experience, and the audience also got the universal elements of the story," said El Hosaini. "I was stopped on the shuttle bus by a Nigerian who said: 'Your film really touched my heart'. A woman from Los Angeles wearing a headscarf told me that the film reminded her of what her brothers had gone through."
The film took five years to make, a stretch that included a trip to the Sundance Middle East Screenwriters Lab, which is operated with the Royal Jordanian Film Commission, and two trips to the US for screenwriting and directing labs at the Sundance Institute in Utah.
"I remember, almost two years back, that I was saying, 'Gosh, I've got to shoot this film already'. I'm glad I didn't because now it almost feels like a fine wine - the script, the project and my own thoughts and ideas are so much further developed by taking that extra bit of time."
El Hosaini was born in the UK, "but only for passport reasons. My mum came over to have me, but then she went back to Egypt with me. I grew up in Cairo, my home city," she said.
The daughter of a Welsh mother and an Egyptian engineer father - "I didn't get the maths genes", she points out - El Hosaini watched some classic black-and-white Egyptian melodramas growing up, but her real love was poetry. "In poetry you distil language down into some images. It's a similar process as in film. You can start off with an emotion or an image, but you find the word or the image that conveys something that's much bigger."
After studying politics, she worked for Amnesty International for several years before turning to film, working on documentaries in the Middle East and editing scripts for BBC Drama.
"After that it reached the point that I'd learnt enough - the pain of not doing films was greater than the pain of doing them," she said.
"I learnt how to direct actors through working on documentaries. You meet people and very quickly need to develop a relationship of trust and openness, and manipulate and move around people to get what you're trying to get out of the subject. Those were invaluable skills to use on a film set, especially when I was mixing actors with non-actors."
But don't expect a documentary in My Brother the Devil, she warned. "Although it touches on themes of prejudice and identity, really at its heart it's a love story - a love story between brothers, and about brotherhood. The story is much more emotional and psychological then the where and when and the context."
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Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse Of Madness'
Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, Xochitl Gomez, Michael Stuhlbarg and Rachel McAdams
Rating: 3/5
if you go
The flights
Etihad and Emirates fly direct to Kolkata from Dh1,504 and Dh1,450 return including taxes, respectively. The flight takes four hours 30 minutes outbound and 5 hours 30 minute returning.
The trains
Numerous trains link Kolkata and Murshidabad but the daily early morning Hazarduari Express (3’ 52”) is the fastest and most convenient; this service also stops in Plassey. The return train departs Murshidabad late afternoon. Though just about feasible as a day trip, staying overnight is recommended.
The hotels
Mursidabad’s hotels are less than modest but Berhampore, 11km south, offers more accommodation and facilities (and the Hazarduari Express also pauses here). Try Hotel The Fame, with an array of rooms from doubles at Rs1,596/Dh90 to a ‘grand presidential suite’ at Rs7,854/Dh443.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
How does ToTok work?
The calling app is available to download on Google Play and Apple App Store
To successfully install ToTok, users are asked to enter their phone number and then create a nickname.
The app then gives users the option add their existing phone contacts, allowing them to immediately contact people also using the application by video or voice call or via message.
Users can also invite other contacts to download ToTok to allow them to make contact through the app.
Diriyah%20project%20at%20a%20glance
%3Cp%3E-%20Diriyah%E2%80%99s%201.9km%20King%20Salman%20Boulevard%2C%20a%20Parisian%20Champs-Elysees-inspired%20avenue%2C%20is%20scheduled%20for%20completion%20in%202028%0D%3Cbr%3E-%20The%20Royal%20Diriyah%20Opera%20House%20is%20expected%20to%20be%20completed%20in%20four%20years%0D%3Cbr%3E-%20Diriyah%E2%80%99s%20first%20of%2042%20hotels%2C%20the%20Bab%20Samhan%20hotel%2C%20will%20open%20in%20the%20first%20quarter%20of%202024%0D%3Cbr%3E-%20On%20completion%20in%202030%2C%20the%20Diriyah%20project%20is%20forecast%20to%20accommodate%20more%20than%20100%2C000%20people%0D%3Cbr%3E-%20The%20%2463.2%20billion%20Diriyah%20project%20will%20contribute%20%247.2%20billion%20to%20the%20kingdom%E2%80%99s%20GDP%0D%3Cbr%3E-%20It%20will%20create%20more%20than%20178%2C000%20jobs%20and%20aims%20to%20attract%20more%20than%2050%20million%20visits%20a%20year%0D%3Cbr%3E-%20About%202%2C000%20people%20work%20for%20the%20Diriyah%20Company%2C%20with%20more%20than%2086%20per%20cent%20being%20Saudi%20citizens%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
