Cannes Critics' Week Yemen Film Interview: Sara Ishaq on 'The Station'
'The Station'
Courtesy of Critics' Week
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“No Men. No Weapons. No Politics.” So reads a sign that we see in the opening moments of The Station (Al Mahattah), the debut fiction feature of Yemeni-Scottish director Sara Ishaq (documentary The Mulberry House).
Its simple story is set in a complex world. “Layal runs a women-only petrol station (aka a gas station in U.S. English) in Yemen, a safe haven in a war-torn country,” highlights a summary of the film. Its rules are listed on the just-mentioned sign. “When Layal’s younger brother faces enlistment, she reunites with her estranged sister to save the one life they still can.”
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The film, which Ishaq co-wrote with Nadia Eliewat, world premieres on Sunday, May 17, as part of the 65th edition of the Cannes Critics’ Week, the sidebar that runs alongside the main Cannes Film Festival.
Manal Al-Mulaiki, Abeer Mohammed, Rashad Khaled, Saleh Al-marshahi, Fariha Hassan, Amal Esmail, Shorooq Mohammed, Randa Mohammed and Fatima Muthanna feature in the cast. The cinematography was handled by Amine Berrada, the editor was Romain Namura, and Paradise City Sales is handling sales.
Ishaq has, since 2015, trained filmmakers in Yemen. Since 2022, she has managed the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk in Amsterdam. Ahead of The Station‘s Cannes premiere, Ishaq talked to THR about the inspiration for and production of the film, the casting process, as well as how it fits into today’s world.
Why did you decide to make The Station, a fiction film, rather than a documentary, given your background in news and doc work?
In 2015, when the war in Yemen was happening, I was in the capital, Sanaa, my hometown. I’d already made a couple of films, and I was working in journalism for different outlets and as a local producer and co-director for different TV-related documentary projects. And I had just received the [best documentary short] Oscar nomination for Karama Has No Walls. There was so much hype around the documentary.
And when the war happened, and the borders closed, foreign journalists were kicked out. So, there was really nobody reporting. And people who were inside Yemen were divided. There was a lot of political polarization, and it was really hard for people to understand what was happening. So, once people knew that I was inside Yemen, there was this pressure to document, document, document, document. It was just me and a camera, and I became burned out very quickly. There was a civil war and also bombs being dropped by other countries, so it was such a confusing time.
It became so overwhelming, and I thought about how I could create a narrative of what was happening to real people. People say nowadays that Yemen’s war is the Forgotten War. But actually, it was just an ignored war. Nobody cared. I had already gone through years of covering the uprising in Yemen, documenting massacres, human rights violations – all kinds of things. And it was falling on deaf ears. No, the only narrative that was coming out of Yemen was about famine and poverty. And that creates the image that people from Yemen have always been suffering. For me, that was just so infuriating.
I want to change the narrative. I want to show people what I’m experiencing when I’m at home, even when the bombs are falling. I want to show them how much we’re actually laughing, even if out of hysteria or out of panic. We are talking about stupid things and smoking shisha when our house is shaken by bombs. And you have a neighbor who is not on the same side politically, but they would still come and bring you bread.
What happened to all the footage you shot inside Yemen if that didn’t go to TV networks?
I started filming on the street, in hospitals and in neighborhoods that were bombed. I have never shown it to anyone until this day, which is heartbreaking for me, but I didn’t want to package it as a product that could be misused or abused. These are stories that people told me – their testimonies. That has to be presented in a way that honors their humanity.
What inspired you to make The Station?
I got quite depressed, and I started staying at home a lot. But in Yemen, there’s a lot of socializing. After lunch, women sit together and they chew khat, or they smoke a shisha and chat. All of these conversations I heard every day were incredibl