Nahla Al Fahad is an Emirati film director with several achievements under her belt. Apart from being part of the jury for the UAE Entertainment Experience, she is Director of Content for Expo 2020 and is in the process of making her first feature film. In an exclusive interview with Shifa Naseer, Al Fahad talks about various projects including her Oscarnominated documentary The Tainted Veil (2015), her production company, and her experiences and aspirations as a woman film director in the UAE.
Over the past decade, the Middle East has seen the emergence of a more mature indigenous film industry, and with it a raft of budding filmmakers and directors whose awareness and innovation have transformed the way people watch movies in the region. Women, in particular, have taken the film industry by storm with their resilience and talent. Emirati film director Nahla Al Fahad is one such force to be reckoned with – she is one of the UAE’s most recognised female directors with a long list of TV commercials, popular music videos and corporate documentaries to her name.
“I started my career back in 2002 as an executive director in the private sector,” says Al Fahad, explaining that her passion for media, innovation and filmmaking drove her. “Becoming a filmmaker didn’t take much time because I knew from the beginning that it is my passion. From a young age, I have always been connected to TV productions, animation and music, so I didn’t stop to think about what to study and what to invest in.”
Since then, Al Fahad has come quite far. In 2018 she got a place on the American Film Showcase workshop at USC (the University of Southern California), which specifically focusses on documentary filmmaking.
“It was a big step up in my career. I have worked on many documentaries, one of which was commissioned by the National Media Council in collaboration with Sky News. It was about the participation of the UAE in the Yemen war. It was a short documentary.
“Two years ago, I travelled to the US to film a documentary on the UAE students in Arizona, LA, Washington, DC and Virginia. The documentary is available to watch on YouTube. It was in collaboration with the US Embassy and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” However, the jewel in her crown is The Tainted Veil, a documentary that was one of 124 feature films considered in the Documentary Feature category for the 88th Academy Awards in 2016.
The Tainted Veil is a historical documentary shot across nine countries, including France, Turkey, Egypt and the UAE. The 78-minute film looks at the hijab’s place in today’s world, how it is perceived and why people choose whether to wear it or not. Produced by Anasy Media in Abu Dhabi, the film was co-directed by Al Fahad, who worked alongside American director Ovidio Salazar and Syrian director and producer Mazen Al Khayrat.
“In 2014, I was approached by Salazar, who is the one who travelled around the world and took interviews from people, to look at the material and write a story. We spent an entire year with director Al Khayrat and the producer of the film, Sheikha Alyaziya bint Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, daughter of the Minister of Tolerance, Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan.”
Sheikha Alyaziya was the one who came up with the idea, says Al Fahad. “We worked for almost a year developing the story, picking the right interviews, and creating this journey from one country to the next. The main challenge was to decide what to highlight in the interviews and what message we wanted the audience to take from it.”
The team decided that the tone of the film was not to dictate any perspectives but to follow a debate on the hijab and let the viewers decide for themselves.
“It’s not about right or wrong but about how you see the different views of both Muslims and nonMuslims regarding the hijab.”
The film covers interviews withscholars, artists, young Muslim women in France who face issuesin the country due to hijab laws, and ordinary people. It shows how people react to the hijab and shares stories from Western women who choose to wear it.
“We also interviewed an Egyptian woman who chose to take off her hijab,” says Al Fahad.
The Emirati director says the hardest artistic choice was for the film to be clear about the message it aimed to deliver.
“We didn’t want people to think that because the makers are from the UAE and are Muslims, they would speak in favour of the hijab. We were not here to influence viewers. We wanted people to arrive at their own conclusions based on different stories that we showed. Our aim was to offer different perspectives.”
The Tainted Veil went on to win many international awards – at the International Film Festival, Jakarta in Indonesia, the Silk Road Film Festival in Dublin and two more in California. It was screened all over the world, including at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2015.