‘How do I tell a story that reflects their lives?’: Qissa speaks to Lebanese-Canadian director Amber Fares

Amber Fares and I meet over video call in advance of her trip to Sundance Film Festival in January. Speaking from her home in New York, Fares is open and generous with her time, and it is these qualities that has allowed her to deep dive into her subjects' lives and create such beautiful films. She is perhaps best known for Speed Sisters, the incredible story of the first all-woman race car driving team in the Middle East. Filmed over four years in Palestine, Fares was completely immersed in this world and the lives of the women in the team: heroic Marah, rival beauty queen Betty, accident-prone Mona, rebellious drifter Noor and manager/motivator Maysoon. Fare’s ability to film without judgement and to truly want to tell the stories of these women is what makes Speed Sisters such an engaging watch. 

Viewed now, with the continuing genocide in Palestine, the film takes on a new resonance. Marah and her family are buying land to build a house, and it pains me that that house might not now be standing. However, the conflict and oppression is always there in the background of Speed Sisters, but it’s not why we’re watching. We are rooting for these women to win. We are, unexpectedly, really into street car racing! 

I open the interview asking Fares how she came to work in film and particularly how she came to this story of the all-female race team:

“I did not study film. I sort of stumbled into it. 9/11, like for so many Arab and Muslim filmmakers, was such a pivotal moment for me. My grandparents are from Lebanon, my parents were both born in Canada, but I say I'm 100% Lebanese and 100% Canadian - I grew up playing a lot of hockey and eating a lot of hummus. When 9/11 happened there was a reaction that I wasn't prepared for. My family all of a sudden started getting phone calls telling us to go back to where we came from, which was wild to me because my parents are from Southern Saskatchewan in Canada. So it was like, ‘Where do you want me to go?’. 

I had never really spent a lot of time in Lebanon. So it was kind of the start of this journey of me going back and forth to the Middle East to find my roots and have a better understanding of the situation. It started with me going to Lebanon and I ended up working with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Later I got involved with an organisation in Vancouver that had this film program that brought Palestinians, Israelis and Canadian youth together to make films. It made me realise the power of films both in terms of the messages of films, but also in the creation of films.” 

I'm 100% Lebanese and 100% Canadian - I grew up playing a lot of hockey and eating a lot of hummus

“I ended up in Palestine: I went initially for three months and ended up staying for seven years. And in that time I started to get more and more involved with filmmaking and then really just taught myself by being on the ground and working with NGOs and making these short films. Then we came across the Speed Sisters. When I first learned that there were women racing in Palestine, obviously it was a surprise for me. Not only that there were women racing but that racing was going on in general, because we all know that there's a million checkpoints in Palestine and so the idea of racing just seems so contrary to the situation there. But when I met the women I realised that it was a really interesting way to tell the story of Palestine, but also to tell a story of the Middle East and especially women in sports. For me it was like, ‘How do I bridge this gap between my experience of the Middle East and how the Middle East and Arabs are being portrayed in the media?’ So I made the film with that in mind and wanted to find a very accessible way of telling a story from the Middle East and a story about women as well. So my filmmaking came about because I felt there was a need to tell stories about Arabs and about Arab Society in general.”

Fares actually started her career in photography, but that quickly morphed into filmmaking. Though raised in Canada, clearly the Middle East struck a chord with her as her first ever project was a short film called Ghetto Town about a hip hop group from a Refugee camp within the jurisdiction of Jerusalem. But it was Speed Sisters that felt vital enough to be the topic of her first full length documentary film. When I asked about what messages in particular she wanted to impart with this film, she was adamant that was not her intention. 

“I think it’s less of a message but more a realisation of the type of film that we wanted to make. The more time that I spent with them [the race car drivers] and obviously because I was living there I was able to film so much - they were like my neighbours. It was filmed over I think a four year period and it just became less message driven and more about how do I tell a story that reflects their lives? The politics and stuff is obviously there but they don't hit you over the head. There was a very conscious decision not to give an ‘Occupation 101’; its aim is not to give a lot of history, is not to actually explain occupation, but rather let the audience experience it as the women are experiencing it. 

We brought in an editor named Rabab Haj Yahya who was instrumental in making this film. She's a Palestinian editor who now lives in the US and she was really able to help us bring out the humour and the nuance and the essence of that film. I think that as I was filming and as we were editing what we realised was there was this natural rivalry that was happening between Marah and Betty and that we would use their pursuit of the race title and that rivalry as a thread through the film. It was my first film, so I can't even tell you what I envisioned at the very beginning. But I think that that is the main thing that really came out of the edit was just really centering it on that rivalry and then, through that, you would have an experience of being in Palestine and of some of the issues that women have to deal with.”

There was a very conscious decision not to give an ‘Occupation 101’

We proceeded to speak about the representation of Arab men in the film. Marah’s father, Khaled, in particular, an incredibly sweet dental technician, is an Arab man who is not often seen in the media. Khaled is Marah’s biggest supporter and he works tirelessly to ensure that she can dedicate herself to the sport. Again, naturally, we were drawn back to the subject of Palestine:

“We see that happening now in the way that when we talk about the death count in Gaza, we see ‘women, children, women, children’. Arab men are discounted. When we were pitching Speed Sisters, people always wanted to see that gendered tension; women not being allowed to drive or religious people in the community thinking it’s wrong. But what we realised was that the immediate men in their lives; the fathers, the other racers, the car mechanics, they were all super supportive.

So showing that relationship between Marah and her dad was really important and I think that a lot of Palestinians saw themselves in that film. They really appreciated seeing a side of their culture, of their community, that isn't often shown. Something that's political but it’s also fun. It had these really strong women, which is so much a part of Palestinian culture. Women have always been a part of resistance movements in Palestine, which is something that isn't always talked about. They have been in leadership roles and they are doctors and teachers and professors. I think it really landed well with Palestinians and then also in the greater Arab world because for Arabs, you can't just travel to Palestine. If you hold a Lebanese passport or Syrian passport or Iraqi passport, you can't travel to Palestine and so their shaping of Palestine is through the news. And so many people have come up to me and said ‘Thank you for showing the streets of Ramallah, the streets of Jenin, we saw a side of Palestine that we never get to experience’. So it was very very well received in the Middle East and in Palestine specifically.” 

Perhaps now we are overexposed to Palestine? We are hearing about it daily on the news. Our social media feeds are full of content. It is the topic of conversation in our homes. And that’s as it should be. But it’s the power of personal stories that are able to break through that wall and remind you of the people behind the headlines.

“I think film just transports you into worlds that you don't always have access to. It's also longer form which allows you to really immerse yourself into these different worlds, both in terms of documentary and narrative film. Speed Sisters uses one example to tell a bigger story about Palestine. One element of a story, because there's never one story that tells the entirety of any place or people. I was a cinematographer and co-producer in another film called The Judge that was about the first woman judge to be appointed to a Sharia Court. I knew nothing about Sharia Law but through this amazing woman we also have another story about Palestine that is completely different [to Speed Sisters]. Some of the themes are the same but it’s a completely different film. And to see this really powerful, funny, warm judge work within that system and also be a mother and also love her country, again, it's the same place but it's a completely different film. I think film is so amazing because you're able to use these very specific lives that are both very individual but are also part of a bigger story as well.” 

Fares certainly knows a lot about working in film. She’s been a Director, a Producer, a Cinematographer. When I asked her how she chooses each position, she quipped “it depends who's paying”. And money in film production is something we continued to talk about: 

“A lot of my work is cinematography and that's paid work in general. I really love cinematography because it allows me to work as part of a team and get to meet really interesting people and be transported into these different worlds, and I'm there and I shoot it. I work with the director and then I'm off to something else. Being a director you really have to hold that project and I like not having to do that. So I like sometimes just being able to be part of it, but not necessarily having to lead it. And then with independent documentaries, which I am making right now, it is often that you're the director, the producer, the cinematographer. There's so much pressure and you often pay everyone before you pay yourself. It can be a really hard slog. It's a really hard industry to sustain yourself just doing one thing. Unless you’re an editor, they are always in demand!

The thing is who gets the big budgets. It's very few [women]. This year specifically some of the biggest films and the best films were directed by women. We're good in the box office. We're critically acclaimed. The fact is that women don't have access to the same budgets and aren’t able to green light projects so easily - very few women have that access and I think that that needs to change.”

So, I asked Fares, other than being an editor, what would your advice be to women that might want to get into the film industry?

“I believe that telling stories that are close to home are the best. You have to be passionate about what it is that you are telling the story about. When we were making Speed Sisters, it was our first film and we got a lot of advice and we got a lot of bad advice too. Nobody knows your story and your characters like you do and it's really hard to trust your own instincts sometimes, but you are the expert in the story that you're telling. So find a story that you're passionate about, that's close to you in some way, and you have to hang on to it and fight for the story. You don't have to take a hundred percent of advice - you pick and choose what you want.” 

“The fact is that women don't have access to the same budgets and aren’t able to green light projects so easily - very few women have that access and I think that that needs to change.”

Fares started in filmmaking around 2009, but fifteen years later and she is still just as passionate about the stories of marginalised people, and about telling these stories in new and unconventional ways. 

“I like telling stories through comedy, through levity. Speed Sisters is a good example of that: tackling Palestine issues through sport, through comedy, through unexpected characters. I'm always looking for that. The film that I just made is called We Are Ayenda which is a branded content piece about these young Afghan soccer players who played within the Afghan National Soccer Association. They had to get evacuated in 2021 because of the Taliban takeover. It's a very emotional story about what it means to become a refugee: to have to say goodbye to your life, in a place that you never thought that you would leave. I don’t think a lot of people from the West really think about what it means to be a refugee. We just expect everyone from Afghanistan to be refugees, or from Palestine or from Syria, and you don't realise that people had a life. That they were building a life in a place and then all the sudden you just have to leave. So that film was trying to use a very specific story of these three girls to tell that more universal story. Then also using soccer and using friendship and using much softer elements of life to tell that story. So those kinds of stories I really love. I do love sports stories. I love comedy. I love things that are unexpected in that way. I'm not a real heavy issue driven filmmaker.”

That idea of using comedy to tell deeper stories is very on brand for her latest project. Coexistence My Ass is a film about an Israeli comedian named Noam Shuster-Eliassi who grew up in an intentional village in Israel that sits between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv where Israel Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel live together by choice.

“Noam is a friend of mine from when I was living in Palestine. She speaks perfect Arabic. She advocates for Palestinians and always has and so I've been following Noam since 2019. Her comedy show is called Coexistence My Ass and this film is based off of her comedy show and then seeing her life as it pertains to her comedy. It's also very very political. I didn’t expect for this all to happen [the genocide in Palestine] when I started making it. It makes the film so much more important in a way that I never thought that it would be.” 

With such incredible films under her belt and more to come, Fares is clearly someone who both inspires and is inspired by the world around her. I asked who inspires her…

“I'm inspired a lot by social movements. I'm inspired right now by the social movement that is gathered around Palestine and the people that are willing to risk their careers in standing up for what we're seeing. People that work towards a better, more inclusive, softer world inspire me. I'm inspired every day on that level and have to keep reminding myself that there's more of us than them; whoever ‘them’ are. How do we collectively make a better world for ourselves?” 

And that, I think, is the perfect question to end on.