Culture Shock
How a former Ontario Hydro mail clerk got the jolt she needed to make feature films
BY Omar Odeh
Photography by Jonathan Dueck
Ruba Nadda was on the verge of emotional burnout. She’d been working full-time as a mail clerk at Ontario Hydro, with every penny she could spare going to finance her independent films. She’d tried—and failed—to get two features onto the big screen and, though some of her 13 shorts had won awards at international festivals, she’d received relatively little recognition here at home. That’s when her boss at Ontario Hydro did Nadda a huge favour: He fired her.
“I had started to hate life,” says Nadda, 32, an Arab-Canadian of Syrian and Palestinian ancestry. “I was miserable at work, and when they fired me I thought it was the best thing that could have happened to me.” Nadda was broke, and she still had no idea how to break into the film industry. “I was in so much trouble,” she says, “but it was sort of a wake-up call. I’d been making these really low-budget films, and I thought, ‘I need to grow as a filmmaker.’”
What had worked for her shorts didn’t seem to translate readily to full-length films. “With features, you need a lot more support behind you,” says Nadda. “The films were, not failures, but they somehow didn’t succeed the way the shorts did. They never saw the light of day.” But her latest film, Sabah—what Nadda calls her first “real” feature—will finally see that light: It debuts in Toronto and Vancouver in late May.
The film is the story of a traditional Muslim woman who finds herself in a burgeoning relationship with a non-Muslim Canadian. It’s a prototypical tale of immigrant experience that belies Nadda’s atypical history as a filmmaker. “The way I learned was by making my own films—and making some very tragic, huge mistakes.”
But her work was impressive enough to get the attention of one of Canada’s biggest filmmakers. Had she been getting better advice, Nadda may have quit altogether. But in 2001, she wrote to Atom Egoyan. “I was really naïve back then,” she says. “I didn’t know how anyone could really help me. I just sent Atom a letter because I wanted to see what he thought of my stuff.” Egoyan liked it, and once Nadda had refined her script for Sabah, her mentor agreed to act as executive producer. “When Atom came on board, he gave me validation.” It was the link Nadda had been missing, allowing her to put together financing from a variety of sources, including Telefilm, The Harold Greenberg Fund, The Movie Network and Showcase. Egoyan’s wife, Arsinée Khanjian, agreed to star in the film oppposite Newfoundland-born actor Shawn Doyle.
Sabah’s focus on Arab-Canadians sets a long-overdue precedent that Nadda hopes will start dismantling Arab stereotypes. “I’m hoping that Muslims become commercialized, almost,” she says. The dilemmas facing immigrants, she suggests, are complex and have more to do with making compromises than choices. “It’s not that they accept,” she says. “They make an exception. That’s the culture.” Of course, the most accurate portrayal can just as easily reinforce prejudices as challenge them. It’s a slippery problem, and Sabah doesn’t always manage to stay on its feet. The result is variously funny, uncomfortable and evidently proud.
It will be interesting to watch what favours Canadian viewers bestow on Sabah. Though with a US distribution in negotiation and pre-sales to 14 foreign territories, Nadda’s employment prospects look safe.
