As soon as Saudi Arabia decided to reopen cinemas at the end of 2017, the production studio Telfaz11, led by Fadan, Al Khairallah, and Ali Kalthami, took the helm of cinema expansion. Suffice it to say that the comedy “Sattar”, in which a depressed man becomes a freestyle wrestler, became the most successful local film in just two weeks, surpassing Barbie and Oppenheimer.
A characteristic of the company since its beginnings, when they produced videos for youtube in the late 2000s, is to target the local market with products that can represent their culture and express themselves with their native language, and above all are productions capable of catalyzing creativity, which for the 35 years of the ban, has been expressed only clandestinely. Timing, coupled with box office analysis, also played a role: Sattar was launched in the third week of Avatar 2, that is, at a time when titles related to science fiction and animation generally tend to drop significantly.
Now Telfaz11 debuts two feature films at the Toronto Film Festival: “Naga”, in the same style as Sattar, is about a young woman stranded in the Arabian desert trying to get home before a curfew imposed by her father. The comedy is part of an eight-film deal with Netflix signed in 2020.
“Mandoob”, on the other hand, is Ali Kalthami’s first feature film, which through the gimmick of a delivery driver in Riyadh, chronicles Saudi nightlife.
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