Saudi filmmaker Shahad Ameen’s road movie “Hijra,” about the bond formed between different generations of Saudi women during a journey across the desert, delves deep into the country’s multi-cultural DNA, intending to show the country’s little known aspect “as a melting pot,” says the director.
“Hijra,” which is Saudi’s Academy Award submission and is in competition at the Red Sea Film Festival this week, is the second feature from Ameen whose feminist fable “Scales” made a splash after launching from Venice in 2019.
Shot in a vast swathe of desert and in several Saudi cities and urban areas including Jeddah, Medina, AlUla and Neom, “Hijra” is set in 2001 and revolves around a Saudi grandmother named Sitti (Khayriya Nazmi) traveling from Taif to Mecca to perform the sacred ritual of Hajj with her two granddaughters Janna (Lamar Faden) and Sarah (Raghad Bokhari).
The ambitious film, which features stunning visuals of remote parts of Saudi, is a co-production between A Beit Ameen and Iraqi Independent Film Center Production in association with Ideation Studios, Film Clinic, Human Film, Daw’ Film – Film Commission | MOC, Noon Art Media Production and Three Arts.
Variety speaks to Ameen about taking her vision as filmmaker to the next level with “Hijra” and depicting Saudi Arabia “in a very different way.”
How did this story germinate?
I had this missing girl idea that I had been playing around with for years. I had a script about a younger sister looking for her older sister with her father in Jeddah. The whole script was ready to go. I wrote it after “Scales.” And then, all of a sudden, I hated it. I outgrew it. I thought it was childish. I threw it out. Then, years later, I was talking to my producer Mohamed Al-Daradji – we really collaborate a lot on writing – and he said: “Aren’t you tired of the [patriarchal] father story that you already did in “Scales”? What if you make a woman’s story with a grandmother in a multi-generational context? So that’s how it re-started.
Do you have a personal connection to this story?
Well my family – it’s not something I say a lot – but my father’s family are immigrants from China, fifth generation. So I thought: “what if the missing girl is an immigrant?” That became an exciting thread. Then, I went back to the earlier script and the best scene in that was when they passed a checkpoint through Mecca with all the pilgrims and all of that during Hajj. And suddenly everything was connected and it became a story about immigration. It’s a story about a girl trying to escape from her grandmother to a different country.
Talk to me about casting Lamar Faden as the younger granddaughter Janna. She’s so expressive!
I was talking to one of the film’s producers Faisal Baltyuor at the Red Sea festival and Lamar passed by with her sister. I said [to myself]: “Who is this girl?” And like a crazy person, I chased her and got her sister’s phone number. She really stayed in my mind. She was nine at the time. Then, a couple of years later, when we started casting I called her. She came do to a screen test with her sister and I was like: Oh my God! I knew I wanted her even before she started acting the scene! Then Lamar acted and I saw that my instinct was right. She was talented. And she has a very nice ethnicity as well. She has a grandmother who is Pakistani, and Indonesian heritage from the father’s side. So sometimes she looks super Saudi; sometimes she looks like she’s from Philippines; sometimes she looks like she’s from Mexico; sometimes she looks like she’s from Indonesia.
The film’s opening scene is quite symbolic. Ice is wiped away from the windshield of a bus headed to the holy land, and we meet Sarah, cloaked in a white abaya. Can you talk to me about how you conceived it?
I wanted it to reflect how 20 years ago in Saudi you just couldn’t see a woman like you see a man. So the viewer should be able to do this gradually. You start to peek in slowly, a man is opening a curtain, and you are allowed to peek in a little bit to see what both of them are feeling. How they act around each other. And then we are allowed to enter into the lives of these three women.
Talk to me about the choice of ice. It’s such a non-typical Saudi element.
In these areas, it gets very cold. They have to scrape the ice off the windshields of their cars. I know it might sound very mundane. But people, when they think of Saudi, they think desert, right? But we have incredible locations in Saudi like the south of Saudi Arabia and the north of Saudi Arabia are all mountainous areas with a very high altitude, you know. So I wanted to bring out this diverse landscape.
Somewhat similarly, the most important thing in this film for me was to present Saudi as a melting pot. A diverse place where a lot of Muslims have sought refuge and they live there in peace and security. That, and also the diversity in locations. That was very important to me. Because, you know, people don’t know Saudi. We don’t have many films. And through that, I wanted to present Saudi in a very different way. Who would think that Saudi would have ice? It’s very ambiguous. And I wanted that ambiguity to carry the story forward.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
