"So this takes the everyday experiences of us as migrants, as people from the Middle East, or as Muslims, and we're treated like just another feel-good rom-com."Īli's Wedding had its world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in June, where it won the audience award for best narrative feature. "There's more than half a million of us in this country, and yet the narrative that we're exposed to about my community is one that the majority of the majority of us don't experience, but we're affected by those negative portrayals. "It takes a slice of Australia that's otherwise not represented on the big screen, and if it is represented then we're usually the ones doing the killings," he says. He's proud to have made a film that presents a migrant story and a Muslim story in a relatable and funny way to mainstream Australian audiences. Now Sami is credited with delivering Australia's first rom-com by a Muslim director, and presenting one of the most culturally diverse on-screen casts of any Australian production. "The more he talked the more unbelievable we thought it was. It was only when Sami told director Tony Ayres and actress Claudia Karvan about his short-lived arranged marriage while they were filming the telemovie Saved in 2009 that the idea of adapting his life for the big screen was considered. He was born in war torn Iran to Iraqi parents and escaped with his family to Australia as a teen. Sami's life has certainly been anything but ordinary. Yes, it might be bizarre and some of the events are, on reflection, extraordinary, but at the time they were happening they were just life." And 'Saddam the Musical', that's a three-hour show that ended up being a scene. "For example, the scene where I get interrogated at the airport - that was a 26 hour interrogation and it ended up being one short scene in the film.
"We had to tone down a few things here and there," Sami tells SBS Movies.
#Anything but ordinary movie series
In it, Sami plays Ali, the Melbourne-based son of a Muslim cleric who, burdened by the weight of expectation from his parents and his community, tells a lie that sets off a disastrous series of events which culminates in an arranged marriage that lasts less than two hours.
#Anything but ordinary movie movie
In the case of the new Australian movie Ali's Wedding, Osamah Sami had to play down some of his real life experiences when making the autobiographical film.
0 kommentar(er)
