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BAHRAINI director and filmmaker Maryam Abdulghaffar’s short film Dark Forest, which premiered at the Emirates Film Festival this month, has won the award for Best Documentary, and encourages young creatives to follow their dreams.
The 16-minute film tackles the story of Czech painter Tina Palu, who pursued her passion for art despite challenges and resistance from her family.
The project is named ‘Dark Forest’ after the painting that Tina creates in the film.
Maryam, who is based in Bahrain and has her gallery in the kingdom, was visiting Prague when she met Tina. The painter’s life and experiences inspired her to share her journey with viewers.
“While I was in Prague, I was hunting for documentary stories that I can tell,” Maryam told GulfWeekly.
“My mom is a painter and so, the first thing that came to my mind were painters who had interesting stories,” the 34-year-old added.
“So I talked to them directly and met with them and found that Tina had a great story to tell. She faced many challenges from her parents and had to leave her family to pursue her passion, which showed she had a strong character. I gathered with a group of friends, Karan Singh Thapa from India, Paola Proietti from Venezuela and Nouf Yarub from Saudi Arabia, and we all worked together on this film.
“We had a lot of meetings and a lot of pre-production planning before shooting the film. We didn’t have any challenges or obstacles as we did our proper work beforehand,” she added, crediting her cast and crew and commending their work ethic.
Dark Forest was shot in a day and edited over a week. In it, Maryam has explored a different style of storytelling, unlike most of her work, which follows an interview pattern.
“This documentary is actually showing Tina’s life with her friends and her paintings. So it’s more of seeing her life than just question-answer documentaries,” she explained, stating that she wanted to provide an authentic feel to the audience.
“I normally like to do documentaries or films in general that relate to me or something that would touch my heart,” she said.
The director from Hamad Town began her professional career as a photographer and filmmaker during her studies at Toledo University in the US. During this time, she was selected to complete a photography programme that provided her the opportunity to land three projects in Ohio, and eventually trained to become a director.
Maryam’s previous work includes the film Noor Al Ezla (‘The light of isolation’), which earned an honourable mention at the prestigious Egyptian Aswan International Women’s Film Festival (AIWFF) last year. She was the only Bahraini to be shortlisted by AIWFF and to receive a grant to produce her film.
The artist is currently in the process of submitting her latest creation to more film festivals. However, she hopes to eventually make them accessible for everybody to watch.
She is also working on two new projects, a narrative short film and another documentary, the details of which will be announced at a later date.
In addition to exhibiting a creative streak, Maryam harbours an entrepreneurial spirit and is the founder and chief executive of Imprint Production, which offers marketing consultancy and visual content production services.
For more information, follow @maryam.abdulghaffar on Instagram.
