International Filmmaker Badr Farha

A Story by starpower

The highly talented and sought after Badr Farha

Who is that guy who had his first directorial effort invited to the Cannes Film Festival Court Metrage? Isn’t he the same person who was the Art Director on another Cannes Film Festival Court Metrage entry and the Production Designer on yet one more festival favorite? Yes, he’s the same guy, his name is Badr Farha, and apparently, we haven’t heard the last of him. He’s still working on films and he moved to Los Angeles, so look out.

It’s not that he’s a bad guy; in fact, he’s a very nice person. It’s just that he takes filmmaking so seriously. What’s wrong with that? Nothing’s wrong with taking it seriously; it’s just that he’s going to win all the awards if we don’t do something pretty quickly. For some reason when he takes something seriously he marshals all of his forces, which in this case is his intelligence and filmmaking talent and throws himself fully into his work. Okay, so don’t we do that? Well, no, we don’t. Not like Badr does, anyway.

Badr has degrees in marketing and filmmaking and he’s been watching movies since he was a little kid in Dubai, where he’s from. Even though we’ve been doing the same thing, that is, watching movies all our lives, he seems to have looked at them from a different angle than we did and he has a completely new perspective on how films should look and how they should tell a story. That’s not to say that he is extreme like Quentin Tarantino, but his work is tempered with new ideas and he tends to push the envelope a bit, only in much more subtle terms and style than anyone else in the industry.

The Last Conversation, for instance, which he wrote and directed, was, in a lot of ways ahead of its time in story, tone and style. The kicker at the end was quite satisfying and the audience seemed to agree according to their very healthy reception of it. Badr isn’t trying to win accolades and awards, they seem to just be thrust at him for his wonderful work. Perhaps we shouldn't worry too much about him living in Los Angeles; after all it’s a big town. And maybe if we play our cards right, we can finagle a job on one of his movies.