Saudi director Ali Kalthami’s debut feature Night Courier (Mandoob) was a hot ticket at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah earlier this month and expectations are running high for its local release, which begins at midnight today.
As is often the case in Saudi Arabia right now, the Red Sea screening felt like history in the making as an intergenerational local crowd packed out the auditorium alongside international guests, lapping up the drama and deadpan humor.
The Riyadh-set social thriller stars popular Saudi actor Mohamad AlDokhei as a Fahad, a man in his late 30s, who turns to work as a night courier (mandoob) after he is sacked from his job at a call center.
When he stumbles on an illegal alcohol ring, he hatches a plan to boost his meagre earnings but then falls foul of the gang running the operation.
Fahad’s nocturnal deliveries take the spectator on a journey across contemporary Riyadh, from its shabby outer suburbs to the new luxury apartments and swanky restaurants of its rapidly changing urban landscape.
He also epitomizes a man struggling to come to terms with the deep societal changes set in motion by the opening-up of Saudi Arabia under its 2023 strategy aimed at moving the country’s economy away from a reliance on oil.
“I wanted to show what’s happening now in Saudi instead of the past or the future,” says Kalthami. “The film documents some spaces and some things that may not exist in the future.
“Some of the smaller streets that you see in the film probably won’t be there five, 10 years from now, what with the amazing transformation that we’re going through.”
Night Courier – Telfaz11
Front Row Arabia, the joint distribution label of Front Row Filmed Entertainment and local exhibitor muvi Cinemas, will launch the title theatrically from midnight tonight on 121 screens in every one of the 63 cinema theatres in Saudi Arabia.
It is expected to do well. On top of its buzzy festival tour, which kicked off at TIFF in September, the film is the latest production from rising content company Telfaz11.
The Riyadh-based banner– which has its origins in Saudi’s YouTube content boom of the 2010s – is riding high on the record-breaking release of free-style wrestling comedy Sattar, which grossed $11 million earlier this year to become the most successful local film ever.
Kalthami – who is one of the three founding members of Telfaz11 alongside Alaa Fadan and Ibraheem Al Khairallah – originally achieved fame for viral web-series such as Khambalah, La Yekthar, and Al Khallat, which racked up more than 1.5 billion views.
The director took inspiration for the character of Fahad from two real-life experiences.
“I went to a gathering in Riyadh where there were lots of famous people. A delivery guy arrived with food, and he had this look of ‘Where am I?’,” he recounts.
He also drew on his own experiences working as a hospital receptionist, while finishing a degree in computer science.
“People treat you like a robot, like you’re not a person. That has stayed with me until this day,” he recounts.
The feature offers a snapshot of Saudi society at a transitional time, where respect for tradition and a desire for progress run side by side, and women are adopting lifestyles and activities previously denied to them.
“There’s a lot of resistance or struggle with change here. I see Fahad in friends and relatives,” says Kalthami.
AlDokhei is a long-time collaborator of Kalthami who up until now has focused on comedic roles.
“I could sense he wanted something else… I told him about this role and gave him a presentation of great comedians who took on serious roles… like Adam Sandler, or Steve Carrell when he did Foxcatcher,” says Kalthami.
There’s also a whiff of Travis Bickle or Louis Bloom about the protagonist
Kalthami recounts that he and co-writer Mohammed Algarawi did research into “Sigma Male Cinema” while developing the character.
“A Sigma Male is a guy who wants to be an Alpha Male but doesn’t have all the tools. There is a whole genre of Sigma Cinema. Taxi Driver would be there, Joker would be there, Nightcrawler, Drive would be there,” he says.
The character also taps into issues of mental health in Saudi Arabia linked to the pressure to conform to societal norms and expectations.
“We went to a psychiatrist. We were like we have this character, read him. He gave us three pages of notes,” says Algarawi. “He said, ‘What I’m seeing is a guy with general anxiety disorder’.”
Hajar Alshammari makes her big screen debut as Fahad’s younger sister Sara, a divorcee with a young daughter who has seized the opportunities created by the opening-up of the country.
“We wanted Sara to be the antithesis of Fahad. This is a new set up, new environment, new world. They both got the same opportunities, but she plays them differently,” says Algarawi, who also plays the smug call center boss in the film.
The drama also touches on the new domain of workplace relationships between men and women, after Fahad misinterprets the calls of a former female colleague.
“We need a dialogue and a discourse about the relationship between men and women and the change of the relationship. It used to be something and now it’s something else,” says Kalthami.
“It was the first time I watched the film with a Saudi audience,” he adds of the Red Sea premiere. “I was sitting way at the back and looking at the women to see how they responded. I could see they were laughing in recognition of the situation, they had been there.”
L-R Ali Kalthami, Mohamad AlDokhei and Mohammed Algarawi at Red Sea premiere
In a sign of how rapidly Saudi Arabia is changing, the film openly alludes to and shows alcohol, even though it remains illegal in the territory.
“Swap this with anything illegal else and the story still fits. We have a 15 rating,” says Kalthami. “The GCAM (Saudi Arabia’s General Commission for Audiovisual Media) loved it. They were like, ‘Thank you for making this film’ but we were wondering if it would be ok,” says Kalthami.
Algarawi adds: “We were going to make it a gimmick film where it’s about that type of stuff, but we never show it. Ali had shot the film without showing it, but then he was like, ‘I think things have changed’ but you can see clearly that the main character rejects it physically and spiritually.”
Kalthami previously broached the subject of Saudi attitudes to alcohol in his 2014 London-shot short Khambalah: A Victim Of Reputation.
“It was about two Saudi guys who walk into bar… and the psychology behind judgement… People loved it,” he says.
The film also taps into traditions of Saudi society, such as the sheikh system under which people of wealth and influence open their offices on a Friday and take appointments with people seeking support.
“I appreciate these alternative systems, that don’t exist elsewhere. I like to show the nuances of the differences of our culture,” says Kalthami.
As the film begins its Saudi theatrical run, Kalthami says he will now be focusing on getting the work of other creatives over the line at Telfaz11.
“We switch hats,” says Kalthami, of the way in which the studio’s execs move between writing, directing and producing. “So, a few months from now I’ll withdraw and go into executive suits and start like creating and helping projects of other directors,” he says.
“We’re all filmmakers. We have a filmmaker point of view and a business point of view. I’m glad we are functioning in that way,” he adds of the Telfaz11 set up.
At the same time, he has three to four of his own feature projects on the back-burner but says it is too early to reveal details yet.
Night Courier will make its U.S. premiere in the World Cinema Now section of the Palm Springs International Film Festival in January. Paris-based MPM Premium is handling international sales.
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