Hala Matar is a Bahraini-American director based in Los Angeles. Electra, which she directed, co-wrote and co-produced, is her feature film debut and stars Maria Bakalova, Jack Farthing, Daryl Wein and Abigail Cowen. She has directed films for Vice and Nowness and for fashion brands including Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Moncler, Kenzo, Vivienne Westwood and Diesel. She made music videos for Interpol, The Voidz and Poolside. She has worked with a variety of A-list talents such as Kristen Stewart, Chloe Sevigny, Johnny Knoxville, Suki Waterhouse and Matthew Gray Gubler. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Vogue, NME, Spin, NME, W Magazine, Nylon, CNN and Harper’s Bazaar Arabia.
Once upon a time, on the beautiful Sicilian island of Filicudi, my dear friend Peach asked if I’d be interested in directing a short film for her fashion brand. The shoot would take place at her godmother’s palazzo just outside of Rome. Of course, I said yes without hesitation. Frankly, I’ll take any excuse to extend a vacation in Italy.
A week later, I was in Palermo with my boyfriend, Daryl Wein, showing him photos of the palazzo. “Why don’t you make a feature there?” he said. I told him he was insane, but something in me said: Go for it. I asked Peach, half-expecting a polite no. Instead, she lit up: “Great idea! First two weeks of September should work.” I pretended none of this was happening and went to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up to a long, jetlag-fueled message from Daryl. He’d stayed up all night writing an outline for our so-called feature. And weirdly … it wasn’t bad. Still, I didn’t take it seriously. I mean, I’m going to direct my first feature film in Italy this September? That’s only two months away! How, when I have been trying to make my real first feature for seven years?! Daryl shrugged. “You’ll improvise off an outline, like Cassavetes.” To me, that sounded like a complete nightmare, but a tiny part of me was intrigued.
So there I was, sitting on the beach, supposed to be reading some pretentious novel, but instead, I was revising the outline for what we were now calling Untitled Rome Film. Over the next few days, Daryl and I went back and forth. I was annoyed it was eating into my holiday … but maybe it would be worth it? After all, I had been dying to make a movie for almost a decade.
We sent the outline to a friend I’ll call “M,” who is a talented actor, and asked if he’d be interested. He replied: “YES YES YES. 100% I’ll shoot this with you in Rome.” I think Rome was the draw for most people. Lesson: make movies in places you and your actors would enjoy hanging out in. Daryl immediately sent it to his lawyer, who, to our shock, set up a Zoom with financiers the very next day. We stayed up until 3 a.m. (they were in Los Angeles), and by the end of the call, they said, “We’ll wire you the money.”
We jumped up and down. I still didn’t believe it. Our beautiful road trip through Sicily had suddenly become … preproduction. More actors came on board, just off the outline, and I started to panic. This was really happening. But how the hell was I going to pull this off? No prep, no script. I’m used to storyboarding, obsessively researching every detail. How do you even make a shot list from an outline? What if I forget the story? I turned to Daryl: “Will you just … direct it for me?” He laughed and said “Absolutely not. This is your moment. Seize it.” It was a beautiful act of love on his part to give me this gift.
My biggest fear was losing control on set. So I insisted, We need a screenplay. And that’s when a mutual friend of ours, Paul Sado, descended like an angel. He happened to text Daryl, saying he was looking for work. Daryl replied, “Wanna write a screenplay with us?”
And just like that, Untitled Rome Film became something real, shaped as we traveled from Noto to Ragusa and on to Modica, our days split between rewriting scenes and debating them with Paul and M.
As September neared, I started calling Italian producers, telling them what little budget we had. All politely declined, except one: Tommaso Bertani of Ring Film, who was in Capri and clearly not in the mood to work. But he said yes.
After one last scuba dive in Ortigia, we flew to Rome for preproduction. Then the chaos began, the kind that only happens when you’re making a film. Actors dropped out,; at one point, two in the same day. It felt like it was over. And then Peach told me there’d been a death in her family, so we could no longer shoot in the palazzo. Total panic. Most of the film took place there, and we were planning to house the actors there too. We hadn’t even budgeted for locations.
But this is Rome. A city of palazzos, beauty and Fellini-like serendipity. I truly believe that when you’re making a film, everything happens for the best; that faith is what keeps me from despair. That, and a secret verse I read from the Quran for good luck. But before I fast-forward to the end, let me rewind.
For seven years, I was working on another film, also set in Italy. I was convinced it would be my first feature. Its failure broke something in me. I couldn’t be in a relationship, and worse, I struggled to love myself. I was so tunnel-visioned on that one script. When I met Daryl, he encouraged me to start smaller, make something more manageable, and I resisted. Until this film. Until now. He really is a great producer and partner, I guess.
To make this movie, Electra (as it is now called), I had to let go of ego, and let go of the fantasy of how my first film was supposed to happen. This one gave me no time to prep. And once you lock an actor, you’re locked into the shoot dates; if you move them, you risk losing everything. So we stuck to the plan: September it was.
My cinematographer, Michael Alden Lloyd, called this production “bootcamp for directing.” And it was. I had to trust my gut, because there was no other option. But somehow, that gave me more confidence. I had the most incredible team. And I got to shoot in my favorite place on earth. It was fast, wild and freeing. Sometimes, to create something true, you need to forget the rules and just leap.
Featured image shows Hala Matar during the making of Electra; all images courtesy Hala Matar.
