Raw, real and unnerving ride through Riyadh’s underbelly from industry high-flyer
Mandoob
Director: Ali Kalthami
Stars: Mohammed Dokhei,
Sarah Taibah, Hajar
Alshammari
★★★★☆
Alittle more than four years since Saudi Arabia opened to wide-scale tourism, the world has barely started getting to know Riyadh.
For its local population, they too are getting reacclimated as the capital city they call home is transforming before their eyes faster than it has before. It’s not merely the massive infrastructure projects, the influx of new residents or the now-bustling cultural scene. There are changes deep into the very fabric of the city, ones that will never show up in a promotional video.
Mandoob, the feature debut of Saudi filmmaker Ali Kalthami, was inspired by those changes. Kalthami is co-founder of the Saudi production company Telfaz11, which spent 10 years building a legion of loyal fans thanks to its wildly popular YouTube series and has now turned into a box office and streaming powerhouse.
Kalthami was always a bit of an outsider, a child from a lower class than many of his friends who was able to observe social machinations from a different perspective.
When he felt certain aspects of the life he had built disappear, he knew it was time to document that transformation in his first film, before it was all gone for ever.
The film’s protagonist, Fahad, is an outsider, too, though he is far less adept at adapting than Kalthami himself. When we meet him, he’s working at a call centre, struggling to keep it together. His father is sick and relies on Fahad to pay his medical bills. When a sudden outburst causes him to lose his job, he becomes a night courier to make ends meet. But that is not enough, so he steals illegal goods from local bootleggers and attempts to resell them on his delivery routes, much to the ire of a local crime syndicate.
As he traverses the city, struggling to find customers who will buy his contraband before he’s caught, he realises that he doesn’t know the city as well as he thought he did.
There are underground clubs, private parties and glamorous lives all hidden behind unassuming closed doors he had never thought to open. This is not the Riyadh you have seen in advertisements. It is Riyadh as it is truly lived, in all its inequality – a world Fahad is not equipped to handle. Fahad is going to have to change, too, or die trying.
It is a compelling narrative on its own, but the reason it soars is twofold. First is the performance by Telfaz11 regular Mohammed Aldokhei as Fahad. The character could have strayed towards one-dimensional if he had not added some fascinating layers throughout.
In one standout scene, Fahad is confronted by a former colleague about his new life and lies about how well he is doing. Aldokhei plays it with an unnerving energy that single-handedly makes it one of the most memorable sequences in the film. Kalthami’s directing, meanwhile, is marked by the maturity of a filmmaker who has been crafting stories for years.
It is highly stylised with mood lighting and eye-catching night-time cinematography that evokes filmmakers such as Nicolas Winding Refn and Martin Scorsese. However, unlike their movies, the style is always in service of the film’s substance. The way the film is shot communicates the character’s mood. It never feels like a filmmaker who is simply flexing his skills.
Mandoob is the second major film from Telfaz11 to hit cinemas in 12 months. Much like
the wrestling comedy Sattar, this too has become an instant success with audiences, bringing in hundreds of thousands who are eager to experience something completely new from a creator who has earned their trust.
While Sattar, on the other hand, may contain a repeatable formula that his partners will be able to use moving forward, it is hard to say where Mandoob or Kalthami will lead us next. With a film as striking as this, there will surely be an even bigger legion of fans eager to follow him wherever that may be. Including me.