Watermelon Pictures is the film company putting Palestinian cinema where it belongs – on the big screen

It’s Nice That (INT): I understand your love of film came from your father and uncle. Could you tell us a bit more about their story?

Badie Ali (BA): Our father and uncle started this company in 1976, purely out of a love for film. My uncle actually was a huge James Bond fan – he thought he was James Bond. During college in the 1970s he actually convinced his school to finance his project, which had an action shot of a car, kind of flying. He actually got them to pay for a helicopter, and he shot the scene; so his history really was a love for film. Then together they started distributing films; they would acquire the rights to films from Universal, Paramount Studios, and they would rent them to nursing homes and schools and whatnot. At the beginning, that turned into digital beta, then VHS, then DVD, then digital and now it’s a global distribution company.

They had an interesting story. They told us when they were very young (this is when VHS started) they had the option to either become a distributor or open up a video retail store. People were pushing them toward the video retail store – that was when video was huge. But they chose the distribution route. And thank God, because there’s no more video stores!

We are actually one of the first companies ever to release television programming on home video, like the original Dark Shadows, The Honeymooners, that kind of content. People thought there was no home for that outside of just people watching it on TV when it was on, but it turned out to be a huge market.

INT: What was it like as a young person who loved film to see that dehumanisation being so normalised on screens? And, how do you believe Watermelon Pictures is now countering that dehumanisation?

BA: So there’s some dehumanisation that’s blatant. In many movies, it’s typically the dark brown guy, Muslim guy, that plays the terrorist, right? There’s very few cases where our humanity is shown, even when we actually have a platform. We are starting to see some change; Mo season one and two on Netflix, that was a good example of countering the narrative.

Sometimes it’s even less subtle. I think what people don’t realise is that Hollywood is propaganda. In fact, I think the Pentagon or CIA has a fund, a budget that goes to films [you can read more about the Military-Entertainment Complex here]. Like the most recent Top Gun film, for instance, the main story is of Maverick (Tom Cruise). But if you look at the backstory, it’s literally about how the Iranians are mining uranium and trying to put together nuclear weapons, so they have to bomb certain sites before they get to it. And you know what? Three years ago this film came out, and this is exactly what ended up happening. So when this happens, people are like, ‘Oh, this happened already, I’ve seen this before, that makes sense’. This kind of propaganda that we’re seeing leads to major incidents.

Going back to Palestine and Gaza, it’s really at the forefront of us what’s happening. The fact that people can look at numbers, and even today you hear Randy Fine saying every single one of them can die until they release the hostages – and they’re talking about kids and women. And other people call them human rats. Is this really how you look at us? When you don’t see someone as human, it’s okay to kill them, right? Because they’re not human. The issue is a historic lack of representation. It’s our job to represent ourselves, authentic storytelling comes from ourselves, and I think that’s what's been missing. I think we’ve been waiting, and we’ve complained for a long time that no one represents us, and they dehumanise us – now we need to take this back for ourselves. That’s really what Watermelon Pictures is about – how do we reclaim our own narrative? The work is not even close to the beginning of what needs to be done. It’s immense.

Hamza Ali (HA): We really think it’s about manufactured consent, and we realise we’re not going to change the world overnight, but at least we’re going to lay the groundwork. For me, it was a lot of thinking about my children and wanting them to grow up in a place where they’re valued equally, and not looked down upon because of their ethnicity. So it’s representation, but also narrative change and demystifying who we are and combating the villainisation and misrepresentation of our people.

BA: And sometimes it’s not just all about the conflict. It’s about us having our own comedy, it’s about us having a superhero film where the lead happens to be a Muslim or an Arab. That’s the kind of nuanced normalisation and humanisation of our people.

INT: That’s true. A lot of the films that you platform are about the persecution and the horrors being bestowed upon Palestinian people. But there also is a lot of lightness, like the film Life is Beautiful. Why do you think that balance is so important?

HA: We don’t want to be identified by our suffering – we’re more than that. Palestinians have a long tradition of storytelling, but I think constantly being the ‘victim’ frames how people view us. We want people to experience our culture for what it actually is: we’re warm people, we’re welcoming people, we’re hospitable people, we’re funny people. A lot of the films – partially because of everything that’s happening – have been highly political, but in the long term we want to branch out way beyond that. Unfortunately, our community has been forced to tell these stories so people can see them.

BA: Just to add to that, with some of the more impactful films sometimes it’s hard to break outside of your echo chamber, you know, the people who already understand the movement. Our job is to try to amplify these. With From Ground Zero, we were able to bring on Michael Moore as an executive producer, we were able to get it shortlisted for the Oscars. For The Encampments, we were able to work with Macklemore. But unfortunately, with the nature of the content, its reach can be limited in reach. So sometimes some of these more accessible, more commercial stories can reach much further and ultimately have a stronger impact on humanisation.

INT: Talking of seeds... could you tell us a little bit about what inspired the Watermelon Pictures name and logo?

HA: You know, it’s funny, because initially my brother and I went through around 200 different names. I think the first one we mentioned was Watermelon Films, or Watermelon Pictures. We then went through a whole series of others, before we basically came right back to Watermelon Pictures. We wanted something that was friendly – it’s a fruit so it’s disarming – but also social media relevance, people are using the watermelon emoji, so it has that kind of reality. Then there’s the history behind the watermelon too. In 1968 the Palestinian flag was banned in Palestine. So people started to use the watermelon – which shared colours of the Palestinian flag – as a form of creative resistance. It really took off again in 2021, following the invasion of Sheikh Jarrah.

We were going to launch earlier, but we ended up actually delaying our label launch to really nail the marketing and the branding behind our logo. The wordmark is the shape of a watermelon wedge, and then we have our ‘seed mark’ which is representative of seeds of the diaspora coming together in cinema, it also kind of represents auditorium style seating. When animated, the logo starts populating with seeds. Basically, we are the seeds, and it’s our job to take these stories from the cinema, from wherever, and to spread them across the diaspora. A lot of thought went into the branding around the logo, and we’re very proud of it.

INT: It’s brilliant – I think the motion really brings it to life. Obviously, all of the films on the platform are worth watching, but I was wondering if there’s any for you that have really stood out or stayed with you, and that you would recommend?

HA: We just released The Teacher on the streaming platform, which is a dramatic thriller – it’s just a really, really great, enjoyable film. Right now, we’re in the middle of our release of To a Land Unknown – I would say it’s one of the best reviewed Palestinian films of all time. I think it’s sitting at 50 reviews, 49 positive, so that’s like 99 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s not necessarily a highly political film, but just a film that humanises and speaks to the immigrant crisis. It’s about these two flawed Palestinian characters who are refugees in Greece, and are put in a situation where they’re doing things that they have to do to survive. The director Mahdi Faifa is a hugely talented director, and the film just succeeds as cinema. Beyond that we have some really amazing films in the pipeline. I would say, three or four of the biggest, most ambitious films to come out of Palestine ever, all in the next nine months or so.

INT: Your films don’t just centre on Palestine, because if you’ve got Sudan, Remember Us and The Glass Worker. I was wondering, why is it important for you to have this intersection of solidarity expressed through Watermelon Pictures?

BA: I think one thing we’re realising is a lot of these different movements are all very related. What’s happening in Gaza is honestly a microcosm of the issues at play, Sudan is one of those places too. I think for us, another natural progression for Watermelon Pictures is to move beyond just Palestine and to start working with other related movements to really make this bigger. I think the more of us who stand together this, the faster change will happen. In the Global South in general there’s so much opportunity. There used to be Participant Media in Hollywood, and they were kind of known in the Hollywood industry as the ‘justice’ label. With them closing their doors and stopping making new films, it left a gap, and I think Watermelon is in a good spot to try to pick that back up.