DUBAI, 14 September 2005 — Fearing they could disappear in a society of foreigners that has expanded beyond anything most of them imagined, Gulf Arabs in the United Arab Emirates are fighting back — through cinema.
This week the country’s first full-length feature film goes on general release. Its makers hope it will help strengthen Emiratis’ besieged sense of self in a land many worry is no longer their own.
Called “Hilm” (A Dream), it depicts a group of frustrated actors, writers and directors who take to the desert to make a film about themselves, then get lost in its vast empty spaces — a metaphor for Emiratis’ own search for identity.
“We are defending our identity and our being in this place,” writer Yousef Ibrahim told Reuters after excerpts of the 72-minute flick were aired to the press.
“This building, it’s a building in a UAE-style. But if you walk inside maybe you will be the only UAE man walking there, and that’s very strange. After a while you will raise the question, who am I? Is it my country or am I a tourist?” Emirati nationals form less than 20 percent of the UAE’s 4.3 million population and tend to live apart from the Europeans, Asians and other Arabs who people cities like Dubai and Sharjah.
Dubai is a throbbing city of skyscrapers and open beaches, a far cry from the Bedouin and fishing society older Emiratis knew as children.
Emiratis enjoy government benefits of free health, education and even housing but fear that through intermarriage with foreigners they could simply melt into the mix.
There has even been a national debate about whether to ban Emirati women in law from marrying foreigners.
Ibrahim, clad in the traditional Gulf white robe and head-dress, said the film formed part of these debates.
“These questions are raising themselves, because of education and because society is getting more complicated every day,” he said. “Inside closed rooms we are discussing this.” In the movie, which takes place in small local neighborhoods and the desert, Dubai is only ever seen as an imposing line of dark high-rises in the far distance.
“We are not people living in a big city, amazed and astonished by the big buildings in the film. We are people in the desert, where the only thing we have to talk about is ourselves,” Ibrahim said.
Director Hani Al-Shaibani said the film would also give foreign residents more of an idea about their hosts. “Dubai is a cosmopolitan society. But I think we lost a little bit, as locals, and through cinema we can find some of what we lost,” he said.
“Non-Emiratis live in Dubai but they don’t know us, so we have to reflect ourselves in a better way. We have to tell our stories, our reality, show our homes, how we live, react and deal with people.”
It will be a surprise for audiences to see Emirati women who have cast off their traditional conservative dress for the more revealing attire of most of the country’s residents. “I haven’t made anything up, it already exists,” Shaibani said, denying he was promoting a more liberal aesthetic for women. “Most women here are different from this, but the story includes women who are free. It’s in the story itself.”
