The London-based Emirati director is a personal favorite and her latest project breaks all the conventions set for Arab women filmmakers, in favor of a genre bending short that begs to be watched on the big screen.
When I first met Amal Al-Agroobi at the Dubai International Film Festival, I knew she was a talent to watch. I got to interview her then after the premiere of her short documentary Half Emirati, a cinematic jewel that presented audiences with the complexities of hailing from diverse cultures in the United Arab Emirates. Al-Agroobi, herself is a “half Emirati,” the product of a Syrian mother and Emirati father and has lived all over Europe and the SWANA region — including going to school in Turkey.
Throughout the years, I’ve caught up with Al-Agroobi several times and here is one of our more in-depth interviews from 2014, published on the HuffPost but originally part of a complete Gulf Cinema supplement for Abu Dhabi publication Shawati’.
Ladies Coffee will debut at this year’s AWAN Festival — the Arab Women Artists Now event in London — before moving on to the Malmö Arab Film Festival in late April.
Al-Agroobi’s lastest project is a horror short meant to showcase her great talent for the genre, but also experiment in a way that is not often seen from Arab women filmmakers. Too often, film festival directors and programmers — the gatekeepers of what acceptable cinema is — want the typical “woe is me” narrative from Arab filmmakers, particularly women and Al-Agroobi remains faithfully outside of that norm. She is strong, she is equally comfortable in the company of European colleagues as she is speaking Arabic with her family and friends and with one foot planted in each culture, each background if you will, she is unapologetically universal in her work. That’s what I love about her special kind of cinema!
The short, as eventually the feature will too, delves into the “Lovecraftian” horror of coffee cup reading, exploring themes of generational trauma and the 'third culture kid' experience. Al-Agroobi, with her diverse background in both the scientific and film industries, brings her unique perspective to the narrative, aiming to highlight the underrepresented stories of the Arab diaspora and their rich traditions.
The short’s story unspools when Roula invites Zeina and her daughter Reem over for an Arabic coffee “matinee,” and the young Reem is encouraged to participate in a coffee cup reading ritual. But in her cup there are unusual signs, not the typical coffee grounds and Reem also begins to see things she shouldn’t at Roula’s house. As the ritual, started with good intentions, goes awry, the women’s lives will never be the same again…
Eventually, the London-based filmmaker plans to make a feature of Ladies Coffee and from the looks of the short, I can’t wait to watch that. There are already some story threads left open so that the viewer will feel exactly as I did watching it — left with bated breath, wanting to watch more. And scared out of their wits, of course.
Amal Al-Agroobi, center, on the set of ‘Ladies Coffee’
The film showcases the talents of Glasgow-based Palestinian-Scottish actress Amira Al Shanti, Jordanian-British actress Rania Kurdi, and Syrian-British actress Faten Omary and is produced by Isabella Speaight of Backscatter Productions and Catherine White of Kusini Productions. The film is Executive Produced by Eva Petersson, Saeed Aldhaheri, Ali Jaber, and Egyptian-British actor Amir El Masry, whose latest roles include playing the young Mohamed Fayed in the 8th season of Netflix’s The Crown and a cameo as an Italian in Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice. Post-production services on Ladies Coffee are from Covent Garden's OnSight.
“We were very taken by Amal’s compelling script, and were immediately keen to be a part of it. Amal is a force of talent and we’re excited to watch her career blossom,” wrote Speaight, in a press release to coincide with the London premiere of Ladies Coffee.
When I asked Al-Agroobi why she decided to make Ladies Coffee, she said: “I really thought it was imperative to make films about Arabs that are different to what you see in mainstream film. At the moment a lot of Arab filmmakers are still developing shorts, but all of us have ambitions to create feature length films and ladies coffee was just a way for me to create an impeccable proof of concept that I could use to approach investors. The feature film is in the same lore, even though it is not the same topic exactly. I wanted it to be able to work as a standalone film, but also to open the appetite of our audience towards something greater.”
To purchase tickets for the screening, taking place Sunday, the 24th of March and followed by a Q&A with the participating filmmakers, check out The Garden Cinema website.
All images courtesy of the filmmaker, used with permission.