PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Shahad Ameen, director of the film Scales.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture

Shahan Ameen talks with Fred radio at the London Film Festival about her first feature, an intriguing and daring fairytale about mermaids and the effect of their appearance in a small fishing village. Besides the mesmerizing look of it, in a dazzling and also old fashioned black and white, the film has a political serious undergoing theme, as she tells herself to Angelo Acerbi.

Scales: Likely to become known as the Saudi mermaid movie, Scales achieves far more than this description whilst laying claim to being the most unlikely drama you’ll see this year. Shahad Ameen’s directorial debut is a visually resplendent tale set in a small Gulf fishing village. Its population live in thrall to the otherworldly creatures they believe reside in the sea. So much so that to keep them pacified, the village has traditionally sacrificed its female children to the creatures. But the drama really begins when one of those girls, Hayat (which means ‘life’ in Arabic), rejects her fate and fights against the patriarchal hegemony.