In making “Jo of Montreal,” Ameen Nayfeh , director of the award-winning Palestinian drama “200 Meters,” embarked on a very different kind of project than his debut feature, namely a feel-good family film that kids could enjoy.
“Jo of Montreal” is about Yusuf (Hamzah Baareh), a spoiled 12-year-old boy visiting family in Jordan and stranded in a remote Jordanian village. After forming an unlikely bond with a Abu Khalil (Kamel El Basha), a retired teacher-turned-shepherd, however, he rediscovers his roots and develops a passion for the community’s ancient heritage and its famous crusader-era castle known as Montreal.
While Nayfeh has had the idea for years, it wasn’t until he made “200 Meters,” about a Palestinian family separated by the wall dividing Israel from the Occupied Territories, that he felt the need to tell a story that would also appeal to younger viewers.
His two young nieces appeared in “200 Meters” and were eager to watch it when it was completed, but it’s not exactly a film for children, Nayfeh noted, adding that he found it difficult to recommend films they could watch on their own.
“The inspiration came from the place, from the village and the castle. That’s where I saw a great potential to tell a story from that region,” he adds.
The film follows young Yusuf as he arrives in Shoubak feeling disconnected from his homeland and absorbed by his screen. A village rivalry leaves him stranded in the mountains, where Abu Khalil and his wife, Fatima, take him in.
As Yusuf helps Abu Khalil with his historical reenactment and builds his public profile through social media, the three become an improvised family. When a development scheme threatens Abu Khalil’s home and the old village, Yusuf brings together his former rivals to protect Montreal’s heritage.
Described as “‘Theeb’ meets ‘The Karate Kid’ — but with no karate,” the adventurous coming-of-age story is built around mentorship, belonging and the imagination of a young Arab boy.
Nayfeh approached producer Bassam Alasad of Dubai-based Creative Media Solutions (CMS) with the project and he happily agreed.
“We are both invested in telling a coming-of-age, feel-good movie because these stories don’t really exist in the Arab world, in the Middle East,” Nayfeh adds. “The independent film scene is not interested in making films targeting kids.”
That was not the case with Alasad. “ I love working on hopeful films, coming-of-age stories and films that have that kind of feel good vibe to them,” he stresses. “That was the whole idea of ‘Jo of Montreal.’ It’s something realistic, it’s grounded, yet it has that inspiring tone to it.”
Despite the success of “200 Meters,” Nayfeh initially experienced pushback with his follow-up project.
“Actually it’s something that we really struggled with — that I’m a Palestinian filmmaker. I should only make films about Palestine. That was told to us, to both of us as a team, in my face. And we heard from friends, from juries and decision makers: ‘What is Ameen mean trying to do? Why is he telling this story?’”
Nayfeh did struggle with the question in the aftermath of Israel’s war on Gaza, however.
“The film was greenlit for production during the war on Gaza. And that was a very difficult time,” he says.
“And, you know, because we already had difficulties funding the film, and then I’m making a film which is not primarily a Palestinian story, so there was an internal struggle. Should I continue with telling the story or not?
But we wanted to make a feel-good film. I think it’s important to me to make those stories because if we are only producing difficult films, hard films, tragedies, what are the younger generations going to watch?
It’s just to give them a small beacon of hope, a bit of entertainment. So that was kind of a thing that I went through during the last three, four years.”
While “200 Meters” helped in giving Nayfeh well-earned recognition as a filmmaker, it was still “really problematic to convince people that, yeah, I want to make this film.”
It’s not an uncommon experience for West Asian filmmakers who often find themselves being pushed to tell only certain types of stories. Jordanian filmmaker Zain Duraie told Variety about a similar experience she had with Western funders when she was making her award-winning family drama “Sink.”
“Unfortunately, there are some perceived notions about the Middle East and what they’re expecting to see from this region,” says Alasad. “Sometimes it’s from the Middle East itself, juries or artists — they would see the same type of films that are highlighting struggle or abuse. Sometimes when the story is just a family driven story or a story about a very specific case of humanity, it’s unexpected to be coming from this region.
“So we want to do films that we want to do. And we know that it has an audience. The Arab audience watches everything: They watch Spanish films, Mexican films, Japanese, Korean — they watch everything. And why not have something different from our own filmmakers? So that’s the whole idea of how we can advocate these stories that are niche but that have their audience.”
Shot on location in Jordan, at the site of Montreal castle near the town of Shoubak, as well as in Saudi Arabia, the production took place in the midst of the U.S. war against Iran, which caused some major problems for the crew.
Set up as a co-production between CMS, Amman-based companies Tabi360 and Phoenix Production Services and Germany’s Reynard Films, “Jo of Montreal” was originally meant to have a German production designer, who in the end decided against working on the project due to the conflict.
“That left us with a, with a really short amount of time to find a replacement, like maybe 20 days before production,” Nayfeh recalled.
Similarly, the director had also hoped to cast an actor who lives in Holland for a key role but he too decided against the project due to reports of ongoing rocket strikes. Unable to fly, the crew had to travel to neighboring Saudi Arabia by car.
And the conflict has also resulted in skyrocketing insurance costs, making it difficult to hire other crew members and the transport of German equipment to Jordan impossible, Alasad notes.
“The good thing is that Jordan really has a big pool of talents,” Nayfeh says, noting the long history of major Hollywood productions shooting in the country the has resulted in many highly skilled professionals. “People here are really good. It was not very difficult to find the right persons, but the time constraint was the problem.”
In casting the role of Yusuf, Nayfeh came across Baareh in his own neighborhood.
“I was sitting here on this table and somebody was playing basketball here, like here in this in spot. And I’m annoyed.
So I take my Bluetooth speaker and put it on the window and I annoy him back. And it started like this until a few days later, my wife was standing at the window and she was like, ‘Come look.’ I said, ‘What?’ She said, ‘Did you see this kid?
I said, ‘Yeah, the annoying kid. What about him?’ ‘Did you see him?’ I said, ‘No.’ And then she said, isn’t he Jo?’”
After speaking to him and meeting his mother, Nayfeh and Baareh began playing basketball together and became friends. “What I expected from him, he exceeded that, really. He is emotionally intelligent and very clever,” the director says.
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