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STUNNING actress, producer and script writer Rana Alamuddin will be jetting off from her Bahrain home next month to help highlight the Palestinian struggle at a major film festival in the UAE, along with a comedy-drama she stars in that has already received critical acclaim.
The eight-day 14th Dubai Film Festival (DIFF) will introduce movie-lovers to new talent, original filmmaking and provide opportunities to Arab filmmakers, as well as work as a medium to promote open dialogue between cultures and nations.
Rana was born in New York with Lebanese roots, lives in Janabiya with her husband, Elie Karam, and their children, Rawiya Poésie, seven, and Taj Bohème, four, who both attend the British School of Bahrain. She said: “I am acting in two films that have been selected to compete for prizes at the festival. One is based on true events and the other is simply a beautiful film.
“I was very excited when I heard the news and it didn’t surprise me because I think they are movies that are deserving, raise important topics, are human, moving, honest and authentic.
“What I care about the most is for the movies to have an impact and for those watching them to go ‘wow, I’m moved, it made me think and it gave me insight’.
“Every time I watch both films I see something new in them, I learn something new and it moves me in a different way. I love that.
“That is the beauty of films, they can really have an impact on your soul and I can’t wait to see how they will affect others.”
The Dubai festival will be staged at Madinat Jumeirah from December 6 to 13 and will showcase more than 120 films from the Arab world and beyond, featuring the best in cinema in more than 40 languages.
DIFF’s highly-contested Muhr competition for feature fiction and non-fiction; and short films originating from the UAE and the Arab world will showcase more than 60 of the latest and best films from established and promising new creative minds.
The competition, which has been an integral part of the festival since 2006, will continue to nurture and reward exceptional Arab talent and cinema from the region.
Rana plays the lead alongside acclaimed Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri in a 15-minute short film entitled Bonboné and directed by Palestinian director Rakan Mayasi.
Rakan, who is known for his issue-tackling short films, bases this movie on the obstacles Palestinians held in Israeli jails face.
Rana explains: “Bonboné, which means candy in Arabic, is about a couple that want to conceive a baby. It’s based on true events of what women in Palestine go through when they want to start a family but their husbands are in jail.
“The prisons are non-conjugal so they can’t see the man or touch each other as there is a glass window between them and they can only communicate over a phone. It’s a very poetic piece and tastefully done.”
Bonboné has been nominated for the ‘Muhr Short’ Awards category. This award provides the opportunity for the winning short film to qualify for consideration for an Academy Award 2019 nomination.
It has already picked up the Best Short Film Award at the Almeria International Film Festival in Spain.
The other film that Rana plays a role in is the 97-minute comedy drama called Wajib, which means ‘responsibility’ in Arabic. It is directed by Annemarie Jacir.
It has already won Best Film awards in the UK and France, a jury prize in Italy and will be this year’s Palestinian Oscar entry.
Wajib is a heart-warming story of the rediscovery and reconciliation of a troubled father-son relationship. It follows a day in the life of Abu Shadi and his son, Shadi, played by father-and-son acting duo, Mohammed and Saleh Bakri.
With Shadi’s sister’s wedding a month away, he travels from his job as an architect in Rome to help his father in the customary hand-delivery of the wedding invitations in Nazareth.
Rana said: “Again I act alongside Saleh who is my cinematic soul mate. He and his dad are phenomenal actors. Wajib is about duty and family. It’s about a father and son relationship and you follow them like a mini road trip as they go from house-to-house to hand-deliver the invitations. You see their relationship along this journey of love and duty. It’s beautiful.
“I play Fadia, Shadi’s lawyer cousin who is very successful as a lawyer but a failure at love because society didn’t allow her to be, and society judged her and broke her wings. Basically, I used to go out with this guy and we lived together for a while. However, after we broke up, everyone knew that I was living with him and we weren’t married so then no one wanted to marry me.
“You see clearly the judgement on women that, no matter how successful they are, some people will never respect them.”
Wajib has also been featured in the Toronto International Film Festival and Bonboné was showcased in festivals in Canada, as well as in the US, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Ireland.
These films aside, busy Rana is currently working on her own project which she hopes to launch online next year.
She said: “The project that is closest to my heart is a show I conceptualised called Bayneh W Baynek. It’s a conversation series that I’m producing and hosting for Pan-Arab women.
“It’s about things girlfriends talk about in real life such as love, finance, career opportunities, relationships, spirituality, depression and how to overcome obstacles, live your dreams, motherhood and the whole nine yards.
“I hosted the pilot show with Nadine Labaki, a talented and adored filmmaker. We were just us girls curled up on a couch barefoot and talking.
“It’s to counteract what’s mostly out there in the mainstream media and the image of women. We want to push the boundaries a little and make things a little more real about how we communicate about matters that are important to us.
“I felt that I wanted to create something for women to feel inspired about and give a voice to those who want to be different from what people expect of them.
“After shooting the pilot I’m now working on all the logistics.”
Rana’s multi-faceted drives, she believes, stems from being the daughter of diplomat Adib and sociologist mother, Maha Dimachki.
She and her siblings, brother Raghid who lives in Dubai and works in business and sister Rayane who lives in New York and works in research, travelled the world, absorbing the cultures and experiences along the way. She speaks five languages including Arabic, French, English, Italian and Spanish and has lived in the US, Tunisia, Yemen, Canada, Italy, Lebanon, Oman, Jordan and Saudi Arabia before settling in Bahrain.
Her creative nature is shared by her husband who is artistic director of performing arts at the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture, across the causeway at Saudi Aramco.
Rana said: “It was wonderful being a diplomat’s daughter in so many ways because we got to really grow up with the values of being a citizen of the world. That was our life. “For me, normal childhood was sitting on the couch with my sister and my brother in Canada and my dad coming up to us and saying: ‘Kids, we are moving to Milan in a month so I want you to say goodbye to all your friends and learn Italian’.
“I was nine and said ‘OK’. I went and got a pocket-sized bilingual dictionary so that I could start learning. For us, that was life. The longest I lived anywhere was in Lebanon when I moved to college and then worked in television.”
During her time at Lebanese American University, she worked at Future TV as an executive producer for a music programme and then when she graduated she became a reporter and a TV host for 3youn Beirut on the Orbit channel which is now OSN.
She also hosted the popular pan-Arab reality show Mission Fashion and has appeared in Lebanon’s first box-office success Bosta. She also played the female lead in Nidal Achkar’s critically-acclaimed play To Hell with Meryl Streep in both Beirut and Paris.
Hollywood beckoned. Her parents weren’t too delighted with the idea but she explained that it was something she needed to do.
She said: “My father believed it was an unstable career and was concerned. It was very hard because he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I was living in conflict and guilt every single day between leaving behind my dad who was very ill to going out there to self-realise.
“I had to find myself and the only way I could find myself as an individual was to break away and follow my dream. I adored my dad and he adored me and we have a very close relationship.”
After a few obstacles, working countless part-time jobs as well as being broke, she finally succeeded in getting a career break.
Rana joined the cast of the American soap opera The Young and the Restless in the contract role of Sabrina Costelana Newman.
Some of her other acting roles also included Wanda in the award-winning short film Recycling Flo. She also made a guest appearance as Kayla on the NBC TV series She Spies alongside and starred in the hit CBS series CSI: Miami and featured in the hit movie Sex and the City 2, opposite Sarah Jessica Parker.
She later appeared on the pilot episode of the FOX television series, Touch, starring Kiefer Sutherland.
She also became an ambassador for the Levantine Cultural Centre in Los Angeles, helping raise awareness, shattering stereotypes and bridging gaps between the US and the Middle East through art and the entertainment industry.
Rana said: “It was an extraordinary experience working with idols of mine such as Sarah Jessica and director Michael Patrick King.
“To be a part of it, hang out with them and work with them was a dream come true. Everything I shot and did with them I loved fully. Also, I got a chance to play so many different roles such as an Iraqi-veiled mom, an American criminal and an Italian, French art curator.”
Hollywood and the endless auditions, rejection and emotional rollercoaster soon took its toll and made her make another life-changing decision, bringing her back home.
“After a while I didn’t want to be in LA anymore. I became disillusioned with Hollywood in many ways. I loved working there but I just wasn’t happy anymore.
“The process was too harsh, it was soulless. I didn’t like most of the material I was reading and I was just beat. Also, my father passed away and I didn’t want to be there anymore. I wanted to be back in my region and I wanted to do projects in Arabic. It wasn’t me anymore.
“Going to audition after audition and the rejection can really take a toll on you. It shakes your sense of self and your confidence and you start thinking ‘what’s wrong with me’. More often than not you are not cast because you are not right for the role, it’s not because you are not talented. But you start doubting yourself. You go and prepare and work so hard, spend your own money and the competition is insane.
“I’d have three to four auditions per day, jumping from one to the next and have to cancel plans, always be on call, read a full script the same night, work on the scenes, go for private coaching. I just wasn’t enjoying it anymore.
“My dream has somehow become a chore and a burden and it was no longer working for me.”
But things are beginning to turn full circle, Three years in Saudi Arabia and settling in Bahrain has rejuvenated her. “I’m rebuilding the bridges to get back to working with Hollywood,” she revealed. “I took a break but now I’m getting back to it, only this time it will be on my own terms, at my own pace, the way it works for me.
“I want to surround myself with a new team because I’m a different person and in a different place in my life as an artist and as a person.”
Her family is supportive and proud of her accomplishments to date, particularly her mother. Rana said: “My mum is a lifesaver. If I have a project where I will need to be away for more than a week, my mum will come and stay with the kids and do everything with them. I am thankful to her and my entire family for all their support.”
Alongside her film career Rana is also a qualified and licensed life coach, providing women with one-to-one private coaching.
“That’s another thing that’s very meaningful to me,” she added. I love to be able to help. We all have blockages, we all have self-doubt, we all have self-limiting beliefs and self-sabotage.
“I learned a lot about myself from living in Saudi and even started a support group for women there based on The Desire Map book written by Danielle Laporte which is a holistic approach to life planning that uses your core desired feelings as the guidance system for goal setting. Arab women, in general, need more support.”
For more about Rana visit www.burkawoman.com, email rana@burkawoman.com, or follow her on Instagram @rana_alamuddin or @baynehwbaynek.
