2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Write a short summary of what happens in the film

It’s 1985. A warm summer afternoon in Hawkins, Indiana. Dustin and the gang from Stranger Things are all on a hilltop. Dustin is trying to contact his new girlfriend, Suzie, in Utah, using his new all-powerful ham radio. He doesn’t reach her, but his garbled message is picked up by three friends who are chilling outside a late night sandwich shop. In Saudi. At first, they can’t figure out where the strange sound is coming from. But when they realise it’s coming from the silver filling in one guy’s mouth, things get fun.

Cultural / Context information for the jury

Most commercials that air in Saudi present a picture perfect version of Saudis, that tend to misrepresent real people. For this film, we wanted to be super authentic in portraying the relationship between the friends, while staying true to Saudi culture, humour and the time period. Contrary to popular belief, Saudi in the 80’s was heavily influenced by Western culture and fashion. And Stranger Things gave us the perfect opportunity to bring out that nostalgia. Late night cruises with the boys or ‘Shabab’ is a typical pastime for Saudi youth. And you’ll always see cars parked in front of sandwich shops or ‘boufias’ - it’s the Saudi equivalent of the American teens hanging out in a diner. We took that situation and gave it a weird 80’s myth meets Stranger Things, twist.

Tell the jury about the casting process.

For this film, we really wanted to tap into Saudi youth culture in the 80’s so that the transition from the Stranger Things scene to our three friends in Saudi was pretty seamless. The entire film takes place in a car, with lots of snappy dialogue, so the actors needed strong chemistry to make it work. We were looking for something quite specific - to be true to Saudi culture and humour. So rather than going through typical casting sessions, we scouted through Youtube. Looking at the channels of Saudi Content Creators. We found our lead actor first, and he connected us with two of his friends who were theatre actors. Their natural chemistry during our first meeting had us in stitches, and we knew we had found our ‘shabab’.