The Quick Rap: Three Questions for ... Khalid Abdalla!
Khalid Abdalla is of Egyptian descent, raised in Scotland, has an English accent, and portrays an Afghanistan-American in his latest film The Kite Runner. It might sound a bit confusing, but it’s not really. Abdalla’s eclectic background is the driving force behind the decisions he makes--and one of the main reasons he was attracted to Marc Forster's [Finding Neverland, Stranger Than Fiction] interpretation of Khaled Hosseini's 2003 best selling novel The Kite Runner.
Adapted for the screen by David Benioff, the novel tells the story of friendship torn apart because of culture and class difference--and is the first novel published in English by an author from Afghanistan.
Hollywood.com: I understand you learned the Afghani language, Dari, in about a month’s time, which is quite amazing!
Khalid Abdalla: Although I’m not Afghan, I do feel that I share in the story that this book and this film tells. I share in this cultural project, I share in the fact that this is the first film in the history of Hollywood where the first point of contact in Afghanistan, the whole region, is a human family story and not political violence. I share in my love for that, my thirst for that, and my desire to give everything I can for that. That fits into how and why I had to learn the language.
HW: What do you take away from the story of The Kite Runner?
KA: Afghanistan went through 30 years of war but it also had 30 years of weddings. In a way, the whole experience for me--whether it’s the type of film that it is, or the experience of seeing it in Afghanistan, or the story of the book--it reaffirms my humanism. It’s just like the story of The Kite Runner. One of the arches in the story is redemption and the possibility of being good again, without turning that into a simple altruism. Part of what that is, is the potential and the desire for it.
HW: This novel was embraced worldwide. Did you feel any pressure when working with the author Khaled Hosseini on set?
KA: His presence throughout the whole project has been remarkably supportive the whole way through--supportive in exactly the way it should be--with a sense of trust.
Khalid Abdalla's The Kite Runner opens in theaters December 14th.
