In Dubai talk, Legendary American Filmmaker Spike Lee opens up about filming in Makkah
Spike Lee opened up about his ancestry, dream projects and offered advice to aspiring filmmakers
The American director also shared his experiences about filming in Makkah
Updated 24 November 2019
Khaoula Ghanem
DUBAI: On Saturday, renowned US director and filmmaker Spike Lee sat down with excited guests at the inaugural ON.DXB — an event dedicated to film, gaming, music and video — in Dubai's Studio City. During the jam-packed headline talk, Lee opened up about his ancestry (Cameroonian-Sierra Leonian), dream projects (a Babe Ruth and Joe Louis biopic) and offered his expert tips and advice to budding filmmakers from the region (“Tell your story. Write what you know and know what to write.”)
During the panel talk, Lee also opened up about filming the 1992 drama “Malcolm X” in Makkah.
The multi-award-winning production, which depicts the life of the revolutionary African-American activist, was the first film in history to be granted permission to shoot in the holy site.
To create the sequence in which Malcolm, portrayed by actor Denzel Washington, fulfills his life-changing pilgrimage to Hajj, an all-Muslim movie crew was hired and given permission to bring their cameras into the city.
“It was a long talk with the highest Islamic court,” shared the iconic filmmaker. “They recognized who Malcolm X was and we had to hire a Muslim crew to shoot the footage for it,” he revealed.
Non-Muslims are not allowed to enter the site.
The location footage included hundreds of thousands of pilgrims circling the Kaaba. The rest of the Hajj scenes were filmed in another location, Cairo, using a replica of the Makkah.
The film was shot in Makkah, Cairo and South Africa. Supplied
“We’ve shot in Makkah, we shot in Cairo and we finished the film in South Africa, where the late and great Nelson Mendela ends the film, so I definitely have an interest in coming back to the motherland,” he said.
Lee, 62, made his film debut with “She’s Gotta Have It,” a provocative 1986 feature that told the story of the liberation of a young black woman named Nola Darling. Since then, he’s made over 20 films, including “Inside Man,” “Do the Right Thing” and “Bamboozled.” In 2018, he released a new movie, “BlacKkKlansman,” that earned him his very first Oscar.
Akio Fujimoto discusses RSIFF Golden Yusr winner ‘Lost Land’
The Japanese filmmaker on his groundbreaking Rohingya-language feature
Updated 19 December 2025
Shyama Krishna Kumar
JEDDAH: Some stories demand to be told. Not just as narratives, but as acts of witness.
Japanese filmmaker Akio Fujimoto’s “Lost Land” is one such story. Billed as the first feature film in the Rohingya language, the movie took home the top prize — the Golden Yusr — at this year’s Red Sea International Film Festival.
“Lost Land” — which premiered in the Horizons section at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where it won the special jury prize — follows two young Rohingya siblings, Somira and Shafi, fleeing persecution in Myanmar as they undertake a perilous journey d to join their uncle in Malaysia.
Shomira Rias Uddin (R) and Muhammad Shofik Rias Uddin in 'Lost Land.' (Supplied)
Presenting the Golden Yusr to Fujimoto, RSIFF jury head, the US filmmaker Sean Baker, said the film “confronts the plight of displaced children with unflinching empathy and poetic urgency.”
Fujimoto’s journey to this film is a profound narrative of personal reckoning. Having worked in Myanmar for more than a decade, he recognized the unspoken tensions surrounding discussions about refugee experiences but never spoke out himself due to fear of persecution. The 2021 military coup in Myanmar, he said, forced him to confront a lingering sense of guilt about his previous silence on the subject.
“Looking back on my decade of work, I realized I had been avoiding topics I wanted to focus on as a filmmaker,” Fujimoto said in an interview with Arab News at RSIFF.
That self-reflection became the catalyst for “Lost Land,” transforming personal hesitation into a powerful act of cinematic storytelling.
Eschewing traditional casting methods, Fujimoto discovered his lead actors through serendipity during community fieldwork. Shomira Rias Uddin and Muhammad Shofik Rias Uddin, real-life siblings who play the film’s young leads, were found walking near interview locations, compelling the filmmaker to reshape the entire script around their natural chemistry. While the original script was written with two teenage brothers in mind, the discovery of the Rias Uddin siblings led Fujimoto to alter the script significantly.
Communication between the cast and crew became an intricate dance of translation and cultural bridge-building. With Fujimoto speaking primarily Japanese and some Burmese, the team relied on Sujauddin Karimuddin, a Rohingya translator who did far more than linguistic conversion. “He wasn’t just translating words but conveying messages, creating trust, and establishing a collaborative atmosphere,” said Watanabe, Fujimoto’s translator.
One of the most remarkable aspects of “Lost Land” is its linguistic significance. Beyond being a narrative, the film serves as a critical instrument of cultural preservation. Karimuddin, who is also a producer on the film, approached his role like a linguistic curator. “As a Rohingya myself, I had the privilege of choosing words carefully, trying to instill poetry, capturing linguistic nuances that are slowly disappearing. So, the film is very important when it comes to the preservation of a people’s language. It was a privilege for me to contribute to it,” he said.
As they were making the first fiction film focused on Rohingya experiences, the team felt an immense responsibility. “Lost Land” aims to humanize a community often reduced to statistics, giving voice and complexity to individual experiences.
Shomira Rias Uddin and Muhammad Shofik Rias Uddin (R) in 'Lost Land.' (Supplied)
“In our film, we had around 200 people — including extras — who were all part of the Rohingya community. I felt in order to show their feelings and their voice; it was really important to bring in the Rohingya people and tell the story together with them,” said Fujimoto.
For Fujimoto, whose previous films include “Passage of Life” (2017) and “Along the Sea” (2020), the film represents more than an artistic achievement. It’s a form of personal and collective redemption. “I can now clearly talk about these people without hesitation,” he said.
The filmmaker’s future ambitions involve expanding on this project. He sees “Lost Land” as a crucial first step, and hopes to support Rohingya filmmakers in telling their own stories directly.
“The next phase is bringing narratives from the Rohingya perspective, directed by Rohingya filmmakers,” he said.
