Kauthar Abdulalim is a Muslim filmmaker from Melbourne. Her ethnic heritage - a mix of Indian Pakistani and Kenyan - gives her a unique perspective to express her ideas through the art form of film.
Ms Abdulalim is the director of the short film ‘Found’ that has been officially selected for screening in nine film festivals so far; a finalist in one and awards in two festivals.
The first award was at the Indian Film Festival Melbourne 2018 and the second was at Real International Film Festival 2018.
Ms Abdulalim told SBS Urdu “Winning the Indian Film Festival was a huge deal as it was selected out of 2,500 films.”
“It was a dream come true and receiving the award from Ali Fazal made it even better,” she said.
The story is quite confronting and Kauthars approach to it on how she wanted to tell the story was really innovative and unique
Bollywood actor Ali Fazal, also on the jury of the short film competition told the that “Kauthar came despite an injured foot to receive the award. I told her that I was blown away by her film. To talk about such an important topic in the simplest and yet innovative way was moving.
“The coincidence was pleasant but the thing that stayed with me was the film because it speaks of racism in the new world order. And it’s loud and clear,” he said.
This success did not come overnight and Ms Abdulalim went through a series of hoops before being able to make the film.
Background
Daniel Schultheis has been working on community film-making for the last 15 years. He is also the founder of Cinespace, a film-making company which works to create greater diversity on screen and behind the scenes.
Ms Abdulalim first met Mr Schultheis more than ten years ago when she was studying documentary film-making at the Melbourne-based Open Channel film-making centre, and they re-connected in 2016.
At the time, Mr Schultheis was running a project funded by the Victorian government based on the theme of telling stories about social cohesion.
He told SBS Urdu there's an important case to be made for people from diverse cultural backgrounds to tell their own stories and to see themselves reflected back on screen - which is not necessarily the case on Australian television or on Australian films.
“So this idea of empowering people with the skills to start telling their own stories was kind of where Cinespace was coming from," he said.
"We ran workshops for about 60 people on film-making and there were about 20 people who pitched ideas for films, Kauthar being one of them.” he further added.
Of the 20 ideas pitched only five were selected. Mr Schultheis believes the selection panel responded really well to Kauthar’s story - coming from a real place, dealing with a real issue that happened in Melbourne.
Screen-grab from the short film Found. Source: Supplied
“The story is quite confronting and Kauthar's approach to it on how she wanted to tell the story was really innovative and unique,” said Mr Schultheis.
Inspiration
The story is inspired by an incident faced by a young Muslim woman in the heart of Melbourne as the unfolded at Lindt Café in 2014.
Ms Abdulalim describes the aftermath of the Sydney siege incident as 'My 9/11 experience'. She said she felt afraid at the time as she used to wear the Hijab and felt that she could be a target for a racially motivated attack.
She believes that people from diverse backgrounds should be able to tell their own stories.
“Often times I see things in media that we don’t necessarily agree with but I am here taking that ownership and saying, I will try to change the narrative and share the story through my perspective.”
Methodology
The film uses an unusual and unique style for of storytelling.
It is shot in a first-person perspective which ties into the methodology of being able to use easily accessible tools and create an immersive experience for the audience.
Screen-grab from short film Found Source: Supplied
The film's budget was not huge, but the intention was always there to share the story in a way where people would understand the emotion of being a Muslim woman in Australia.
“I wanted the film to be impactful and a little bit more close to the audience. So that they would feel as if it’s them walking in the person's shoes,” Ms Abdulalim said.
“Because of that, we decided to go with the first person perspective. You can take the lead character out and put yourselves in those shoes to experience their journey.”
Future plans as a filmmaker?
Since making 'Found', Ms Adbulalim has released another short film named 'Kasoor', a visual poem depicting depression and anxiety a woman has gone through post-breakup.
"It's a short documentary that explores some of the challenges Australian Muslim woman face when trying to find a spouse," she said.
“Another theme that I plan to soon be working on will be family violence through the medium of film and I am currently developing a script for a comedy web series which should be a lot of fun.”
