UAE stars in trailer for ‘Dune: Part 2’

DUBAI: Fake identities are a strange thing. For years, Saudi actress Nour Alkhadra has known exactly how to introduce herself: “Hi, I’m Nour, I’m a streamer and gaming entrepreneur.” It was her image in the newspaper.

How quickly things change. With lead roles in two of the region’s most exciting new films, Netflix’s “The Matchmaker” and “HWJN,” Alkhadra will have to add another row to her resume: 2023’s breakout Saudi female star.

All of this started during the COVID-19 lockdown. Until then, Alkhadra had been living in London, focusing on her gaming company WeGeek and her popular Twitch streaming account. The way forward seems clear.

“Then COVID happened and I was like, ‘My God, who am I? Why me?’ It was a lot of depressing things,” Alkhadra told Arab News.

“Then I put everything aside and started thinking about what deep down I really wanted to do. I realized what I always wanted to do but never tried: acting. So I started taking classes in London and I fell in love with it . I want to start pursuing roles right away,” she continued.

Alkhadra has lived outside of Saudi Arabia for 11 years and a lot has changed since she left. While growing up she always loved acting in front of her family, acting was never a possible career so it wasn’t her dream. But as she pursues a different life for herself, her homeland begins to change, and a powerful new film industry is about to take off. Alkhadra wants to be involved.

“I don’t want to act all over the place,” she said. “I wanted to act in Saudi. We had so many stories to tell. But when I moved back to Saudi two and a half years ago, I didn’t actually know anyone in the film industry. I started browsing online forums that no one really paid attention to, and Trying to find places where you can post auditions.”

Alkhadra quickly started making connections and landed several roles in the TV series. This all happened fairly quickly. So fast, in fact, that when she saw the listing for “HWJN,” the film adaptation of Saudi Arabia’s all-time best-selling fantasy novel, she didn’t even have a screening to send because nothing she shot had been released at the time. Undeterred, she came up with a different plan.

“I have nothing to show, but I do have a video of myself filming at home where I took scenes from the film and replayed them in front of my camera. I did (Quentin Tarantino 1994 The two scenes in “Pulp Fiction” in which Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace communicates with John Travolta’s Vincent Vega at a restaurant, and There’s Samuel L. Jackson’s iconic “Ezekiel 25:17” monologue. That’s the tape I sent them,” Alkhadra said.

It wasn’t supposed to work—but beneath the rough edges, that tape had a quality that Iraqi director Yasir Al-Yasiri couldn’t deny.

“The director messaged me and said, ‘I saw your Pulp Fiction. I love it. I really love the way you can express things with your eyes and face without words. I saw all of that in , but I was casual. I said, ‘OK, cool.’ That’s how I did my first film,” Alkhadra said.

“HWJN is a romance between supernatural beings and humans—I play a human. It’s an honor because it’s Saudi’s first fantasy film,” she continued. “I’m excited to be a part of it.”

Alkhadra returns to Saudi Arabia to break ground with his first psychological thriller since the kingdom’s first fantasy, a Netflix original titled “The Matchmaker,” filmed in historic AlUla. She’ll play the lover again, but this time it’s not someone to be trusted. In it, she seduces an unsuspecting man to an ancient blind date ritual in the desert that contains far less romance than he imagined.

“After the casting, I went to Riyadh to meet the director. We sat down and went, ‘Okay, why is she like this? ’ And then we started figuring out her backstory, the depth of her pain and anger, and even her kindness. We found out that she wasn’t actually a bad person, she just wanted things to be fair. It goes deeper—it makes her really mean something to me,” Alkhadra said.

Mentioning this woman’s story, she felt immediately, awakened her inner creative impulse. As she sat on the bed she started thinking about all those days and nights during lockdown, making herself miserable with anxiety, she’d been battling it for years and couldn’t stop thinking about it, endlessly in her head Scenarios that create things that could happen never happen. But she realized that anxiety could be misplaced creativity.

“I used to think my wild imagination was a curse. But actually, on paper, it was a blessing. I knew that if I wrote, I could use my weaknesses to work for me,” says Alkhadra.

While more film roles are on the horizon, including another yet-to-be-announced 2024 film from Saudi production company Telfaz11 directed by Wael Abumansour, Alkhadra is currently writing his own film, a film inspired by both. Fantastic projects inspired by the movies she loves and the many video games she’s fallen in love with over the years, and even when she no longer has time to stream, she hasn’t let that passion die.

“At first, it wasn’t even fantasy. I was writing something from real life, inspired by a true story. I wrote the whole outline like that, but then, as I continued to work, the fantasy elements started to develop naturally. This is still It’s a human story, but there’s more to it than I’m exploring,” she said.

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Alkhadra was inspired not only by her near-instant success, but also by how much space was left on the Saudi canvas to paint. In a country with so many stories to tell, she is thrilled to be among those who are lucky enough to start telling them.

“We are the ones who are preparing for the next generation. We are the trailblazer generation and I feel very lucky to be a part of it. Already the tastes in Saudi are changing – Saudi movies are topping the streaming charts and at the box office ,”she says. “Seeing how beautiful it is, I can’t wait to be a part of the next step.”