What We’re Waiting For
Why films about Muslim identity aren’t enough, and why Hala left me wanting more
Note: This piece is written based on having watched the Hala short film. I can’t speak to the full film, which seems to follow the short relatively faithfully but may have deviated meaningfully. I do hope that’s the case, but either way, I intend this to be a larger commentary on films about identity, not just a review of the short film.
Earlier this year, in some rabbit hole of the internet, I stumbled on Minhal Baig. I was ecstatic — an up-and-coming Muslim woman writer and director making it in Hollywood with strong credits already to her name. ‘This is it,’ I thought. ‘The dope, talented, thoughtful Muslim filmmaker we’ve been waiting for.’
It feels like I’ve been waiting for this person for ages, someone of shared identity who could make the films I crave. In a chaotic merry-go-round of hobbies and interests, my enthusiasm for film and writing has never waned. Films move us in ways that little else can — we sit, transfixed, in darkness, for 90 minutes. No phone, no interruptions, just a single story. At their best, we walk away with something that will sit in our hearts for years to come.
So it makes sense that I have longed for films that speak more directly to me. I remember the first time I watched Ali’s Wedding, I wanted to cry. It seemed silly that a movie, just by virtue of featuring Iraqi characters (including one that shared my name) and throwing around sometimes broken Arabic, would stir me the way that it did. There’s something undeniably powerful and jarring about a film in a world where you are the expectation, not the stranger. The experience becomes visceral. Anything else after that feels like voyeurism.
But still — I only almost cried. And this was my reaction for almost every movie or TV show that featured Arab or Muslim characters. Whether it was Anwar in Skins or all of Ramy, I always found myself wanting more. Where was our transcendent film? Our film that didn’t mire itself in the often superficial questions of identity, but allowed that swirling and often-confusing context to ask deeper questions about our individual struggles? Where was our Moonlight?
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So often, films of predominantly white characters view their protagonists, good or bad, as actors in the world. Films that feature anyone else — Muslim, gay, black — view their protagonists as acted upon. They are simply tackling questions of the institutions and structures that surround them. Arab audiences get films about Palestine, Black audiences get variations of 12 Years a Slave, white audiences get rom-coms and Goodfellas. Rarely do we get the Moonlight, the film where the questions of identity inform the narrative but are not the crux of it.
I explain this all to preface what excited me about coming across Minhal — a young Muslim woman who has all the hallmarks of an excellent filmmakers ready to tackle exactly these questions. Clicking into the Vimeo link for Hala, I was ready.
And then I was disappointed.
I saw a (well-produced, beautifully shot) film about a Muslim girl with conservative parents, locked away, in hijab, falling in love with a white man and liberated by sexual climax and removing her hijab.
The story itself was rich and textured. The questions at hand of a Muslim woman’s ability to navigate her agency in a conservative Muslim household were all completely valid. But ultimately, the film felt like it still never tackled anything outside of the structures of identity acting upon its characters. Hala existed only as a response to what it meant to be a Muslim woman. Her identity didn’t inform her character — it controlled her destiny and made her choices and personality insignificant.
Ultimately, there will always be films that dive deeply into how we interact with our identities, how we actively work to reject or accept the cultures, families, institutions, policies, whatever else that shape us. In fact, we need those films. We do need to constantly interrogate our identities, a burden that white audiences will likely never face. In fact, my only true critique of Hala as a film is that the character’s discovery of agency depends on the tropes of a white savior and release from identity. There may have been a more artful way to depict that story that didn’t activate those tropes.
But really, my larger critique is around the questions our community sees tackled in media, and whether we will ever get to move past interrogating identity.
However, I recognize it is unfair to put the weight of the community, or even just my expectations, on Minhal or any single person. And for better or for worse, I also recognize that to make it in this industry, or any industry, we often must do work appeases but does not satisfy. I’m not sure if that was her intention with Hala, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter — in her position, I’d likely have made the same choices, especially if it meant getting a film released to a broad audience in a way that few, if any, have done before me.
Ultimately, I’m still excited. Minhal, and filmmakers like her, are going to pave the way for amazing work. I’m just still waiting, for now.
