Jordanian director Zain Duraie
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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I had 136 scenes that I had to shoot in 22 days.
Did it go on plan? Sometimes it did, many times it didn't.
Welcome to In The Studio from the BBC World Service, the programme that investigates the creative process.
The first thing I learned in film school was Murphy's Law. And if things will go wrong, they will go wrong.
My name is Stephen Hughes, and this is a voice note sent to me by the Georgianian writer-director Zane Durayi. She was working on her debut feature film, Sink, a powerful and unsettling drama about a young mother coping with her son's growing mental health issues.
It's a subject I really wanted to talk about. First of all, it's a very personal story to me. I think it's also a subject that hasn't been really explored in the Arab world. So nobody really ever talked about the subject in the MENA region before. And I kind of wanted to break this stereotype that we're always making similar subjects. And I wanted to do something different.
So why do you think it hasn't been a subject for Middle East cinemas?
I think it's too scary for my part of the world because the West are usually very much keen into our predictable subjects like refugees, war. So people are afraid to kind of get out of the box, I guess.
I was talking to Zain just after Sink's European premiere at the London Film Festival in October 2025. She told me just how hard it was to get finance for the film.
It was tough. Yeah, it was a risk. I mean, we were able to secure money from the region, but for example, trying to get money from France was kind of a nightmare because they thought the film was not It's a sentence I keep hearing, that it's not Jordanian enough, that basically it did not have the elements that they expected, stereotypical elements from my country, and that we do not feel this is a Jordan. And I think they just have this different gaze. And I said to myself, but that's not the world I know. I'm not going to go write about a different class of family just so I can please the fundings and get money. then you lose your authenticity as a filmmaker. I hope filmmakers do something different.
Like, let's break the stereotype in the Arab world.
How did Zain Duraie decide to make Sink about a mother's struggle with her son's mental health?
Let's make different stories. Let's show the West that we have different things to say. I mean, this is just me being very hypothetical right now, but I do assume that they maybe expected less of a modern family. Maybe they were shocked that the family can't speak English or that we're, like, educated people. And I think they were shocked that I made something like that. And I'm not sure it's very keen to their formula.
So where did you find the funding then, eventually?
Well, my producer raised the money fully from the Middle East.
Jordan does have a growing film industry and has often been used as locations in Hollywood movies, most famously in Lawrence of Arabia.
We have Denis Villeneuve, he flew in, he shot Dune 1 and 2. The Martian shot in Jordan. We have Wadi Rum, you know, the biggest desert. So all the Hollywood films come and shoot there. So we have a good working industry in that way.
However, that doesn't seem to make it any easier for Jordanian directors to make their movies and tell their stories.
In the local scene, we're still very slow. We barely have any films. We have maybe a maximum of a film a year.
Despite her lack of opportunities for Jordanian filmmakers, Zain knew from an early age that she wanted to be a director.
I was in high school two years before I graduated and I was doing my British examinations at high school and we had the drama A-level and I knew that I wanted to be in this world. And the theater was never enough for me.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:39
2
How did Zain Duraie decide to make Sink about a mother's struggle with her son's mental health?
3:39–12:24
3
Why was it so difficult to finance Sink and what funding obstacles did she face?
12:24–19:24
4
How does Jordan’s film industry context shape opportunities for local directors?
19:24–22:32
5
What early influences (like Titanic) led Zain to pursue film and study abroad?
22:32–28:59