Ali Hakim on How AI Helped Him Envision ‘700 Days in Homs’

A film student trapped by Syrian government troops in the besieged city of Homs tries to find his way out in Sulaiman Tadmory and Ali Hakim’s “700 Days in Homs.” 

The project is currently under development at Germany’s Hakim + König Film, with Hakim headed to Match Me!, Locarno’s prestigious networking platform for emerging producers taking place between August 9-11.

Produced with Epikfilm, “700 Days in Homs” is inspired by Tadmory’s real-life struggle for survival in a war-torn city. “I’ve lived through the relentless terror of bombings in Homs, where fear and destruction were omnipresent,” he said in a statement. “‘700 Days in Homs’ captures the profound resilience and solidarity of young residents amidst the chaos, shifting the narrative from despair to hope. This film aims to amplify their voices and inspire global awareness, a testament to the unyielding spirit of the Syrian people.” 

A journalist turned filmmaker, Tadmory will co-write and co-direct the film with Hakim, whose feature debut “Bonnie & Bonnie” played at the Hamburg Film Festival in 2019. The war drama spearheads the development slate at Hakim + König Film, an emergent production company created by Hakim and Max König (“WaPo Bodensee”) and aiming to tap into the “pop arthouse” sector in Germany and internationally.

Speaking with Variety ahead of Match Me!, Hakim said he wants to work on arthouse films “but find a huge audience for them.” “We don’t want to make films for a thousand people in cinemas. We want to be in the big cineplex with our films. This is our unique selling point. It’s also important to us to have diverse and universal stories and not have projects that only work in Germany, a smaller market with fewer funding opportunities.”

This desire to create films with wide appeal led Hakim to focus on “700 Days in Homs” amidst the company’s growing development portfolio. “It’s our challenge to find something to touch people that is also entertaining. People want more than superhero stories and, with a good team and a good story, you can still entertain people with an arthouse film.”

Currently working on a second draft of the script for “700 Days in Homs,” Hakim cites big American movies such as Marc Webb’s “500 Days of Summer” and Christopher Nolan’s “Memento” as major inspirations for the film. “We thought about ‘500 Days of Summer’ because of the anachronistic way of telling the story. When I first heard Sulaiman tell his tale, he would go from the future to the past, from one point to the other in a non-linear way because this is how the human brain works. I want to replicate this with our film and also have something a bit more daring like Nolan did with ‘Memento.’”

Afghan-German filmmaker Hakim is one of 36 young producers selected for the tenth edition of Match Me! Commenting on his expectations ahead of the initiative, the producer says landing financing isn’t his priority when in Switzerland. “I am thinking long term so I can forge relationships with people who know they can trust me in the future. I want to learn from more experienced producers and understand how they get projects off the ground in other countries. How do people finance their films? How are they engaging with new technology?”

Technology is a subject of great interest to the producer, who is quick to point out how useful AI has been throughout his creative process. “The first thing I do before writing a project is create a poster. I want to imagine the film playing at a cinema. Then I start listening to music and building images with AI from certain references. I’m a very visual writer.”

“Before fighting against a new technology I try thinking about how I can use it to make my stories better,” says the producer when asked about the controversy of using artificial intelligence within filmmaking. “When I write a script, it usually takes me four days to work on a breakdown. Chat GPT can do it in two hours.”

“We are also thinking about dubbing with AI and creating subtitles with AI. I’m heading to a conference about AI subtitling in Berlin next September and this would expand our territories exponentially,” he added. “We are thinking internationally here.”