Ali Kalthami jokingly asserts that Telfaz11, the Saudi Arabia production company he helped co-found more than 10 years ago — long before the country announced it was reopening cinemas for the first time in 35 years — is currently the “hot thing” in the local film industry.
He’s not exactly wrong.
The company’s first feature Sattar smashed Saudi box office records at the start of the year, becoming the most successful local feature of all time in the space of a couple of weeks, and would go on to beat most major Hollywood releases (including Barbie). Less than 12 months on at the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah it currently has two of buzziest titles screening in Naga and Mandoob, both of which premiered in Toronto. Screenings for the films were among the first to sell out.
Suspense thriller Naga — part of a multi-picture deal Telfaz11 signed with Netflix — comes from writer/director Meshal Aljaser and tells the story of a girl whose efforts to sneak out for a secret date spiral out of control. Mandoob, meanwhile, is a darker comedy set in Riyadh, following a delivery man who unwittingly gets caught up in the city’s more illicit underbelly.
Despite being a prolific creative for many years, Mandoob also marks the first feature directed by Kalthami, who says he’s been biding his time, helping produce other Telfaz features from its roster of directors, while quietly developing the project in the background.
“I’m glad I did it that way — it made me wiser, so I could learn from my mistakes and see the position of the market,” he explains from the Red Sea Festival ahead of Mandoob’s local premiere on Sunday, Dec. 3.
It’s a strategy Telfaz11 has perfected from the beginning, that of carefully analyzing the cinematic landscape before racing to rush out films (despite being one of the more established companies when cinemas reopened in 2018, its first release didn’t come until 5 years later).
And Kalthami explains Mandoob marks part of the next stage of the company’s strategy to “unlock a new potential” for a still young market with an as-yet-untested genre.
Up until now, Telfaz11 has been known — and celebrated — for its comedies (it made its name making comedy sketch shows for YouTube), and most Arabic language releases have stuck to humor. But Mandoob breaks away from that mold with something darker.
“I’m hoping that we open up a new demographic and that people who were perhaps losing the faith that genre wasn’t being catered for, find something in this,” he says. “We want to be a studio for filmmakers who want to tell a story that could be out of the norm. We want to break the norm and surpass it — we want to be known as a studio that does genres and isn’t stuck to one thing.”
Mandoob is also part of an effort to position Telfaz11 internationally, to get recognition from film festivals such as Toronto and see their films travel the globe. While Netflix is releasing Naga, Mandoob is being shopped by MPM Premium, with THR understanding some territories have already been snapped up (in Saudi, it’s being released by Front Row Arabia, which helped land Sattar record-breaking results).
As a Saudi who has watched the dramatic changes in his country over the last few years, Mandoob is also something personal for Kalthami, set in the present day in his home city of Riyadh.
“We go to the cinema all the time and watch films that show places and behaviors and belief systems in stories that reflect the time that the film was shot, and I guess that’s what I was thinking about while making this,” he says. “I know for a fact that Saudi will shift completely in the next 10 years. So the film becomes a reference point. I’m not saying that Mandoob is a document of reality, it’s a reference to reality and drawn from reality.”
The reaction to Mandoob in Toronto — its first contact with the public — far exceeded what Kalthami expected, especially for a local film. He recalls looking back at the audience and seeing a sea of “white faces and blonde hair,” and thinking “Oh my god, this is not remotely us — are they going to know what the story is about?”
But they did.
“They got the humor, they got the sarcasm, they understood the character, they got the true essence of the genre,” he says, adding that there was also a “huge interest” from people in seeing a Saudi film, possibly for the very first time (and a story that many might not expect to come from the country). By the time of the second screening at TIFF, word had gotten out and a younger audience came, some of whom Kalthami says had lived in Saudi in their childhood, and noticed things in the film he never thought anyone outside the country would spot.
After its bow in Toronto, Telfaz11 has been using its strength with social media to try to create a conversation around Mandoob before its Saudi debut at the Red Sea Film Festival and its local release, helping explain what it is about and why it is in a different genre fans may be used to.
“It was to control expectations or even guide expectations,” he says. “I was afraid maybe it’s a genre that people wouldn’t be interested in, but it’s been the opposite. That’s the reaction we’ve had from people. It’s like, thank you, we’ve been waiting for something like this. It was kind of a bet I made in choosing this film, but it’s kind of paying off.”
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