Some ideas become films. Some films become questions. Every viewer sees a different film. What did you see?

HĀL is not only a film, nor merely the idea of a film. It was born from a rupture: for almost five years I developed a previous project, Boo, into which I had poured everything. When it was rejected, I found myself suspended between shock and paralysis: I was being asked to move forward without resources, yet I knew that film could not exist under those conditions. I chose not to abandon it, but to put it on hold, and to write something that could be made almost from nothing. In that passage I understood that doubt was not an obstacle to eliminate; it was the very material of the creative process. From there came the idea of a dialogue in a metaphysical space between a newly born idea and an older idea already “left on hold.” HĀL—derived from the Arabic “هل؟” (“Is?” / “What if?”)—takes shape as a film about hesitation and the fear of creating, set in Al-Sarmadeya, an abstract, timeless place where ideas wait before becoming real. The film opens in darkness: not as a pause, but as a threshold. It is an invitation to change one’s way of looking and to cross uncertainty instead of avoiding it, leaving the viewer to complete the meaning.