Indi Filmmaker Omar Saleh's First Feature

(AMMAN, January 16, 2008) After a series of short films, Cooperative filmmaker/screenwriter Omar Saleh is taking his first step into feature film production with a screenplay script titled Tafahum.

Tafahum is a story about an Arab civil rights activist, who helped lead student movements, that shaped the Cold War political landscape, with calls for democracy, but eventually went into exile. Upon his return from exile, he is confronted with a drastically different environment, and his search for old comrades leads to unexpected revelations and disappointments.

“I wanted my first feature film to shed light on the Cold War generation in the Arab world,” commented Omar Saleh. “This is a generation that some intellectuals refer to as the frustrated generation, one that had struggled to build a better Arab world but was thwarted, pre-empted, and, in some cases, absorbed into the same governments they once fought hard to reform and democratize.”

Saleh started to research the script two years ago, but his interest in writing a novel about the “frustrated generation” had fascinated him long before, until his entry into indie filmmaking, which presented him with an interesting option, to make a film about this topic. His film treatment was selected to the Produire au Sud Beyrouth 2007 workshop.

The energetic filmmaker is working on another feature script that he expects to be in circulation by the end of 2008. Concurrently, Saleh is finalizing a short film with an expected release date of second quarter of 2008. With little chance for local funding, Saleh will be looking for European co-producers in the upcoming period.

Omar Saleh started his indie filmmaking journey with the Amman Filmmaker Cooperative as an actor in Overdose (2005), but later went on to co-direct a few shorts such as Decision Man (2005), The Last
Patch (2006), What a Job (2007). His films were selected to the Carthage Film Festival (Tunis), Jordan Short Film Festival (Jordan), San Francisco Arab Film Festival (USA), Emirates Film Competition, Independent Film & Video Festival (Greece), Amsterdam Film Experience Festival (Netherlands), and others.