Arab News: The film world is full of directors, but few have mastered the challenge of the true tentpole Hollywood blockbuster. Egyptian-American director Ali Selim just did so with aplomb — and made history in the process.With a reported $212 million budget, Marvel’s “Secret Invasion” is the largest project led by an Arab filmmaker to date, a sprawling sci-fi spy thriller miniseries with an all-star cast. How did he pull it off? By focusing on the human element, even when things were at their biggest.
“For me, it always comes down to creating a space for actors to do that very small, mysterious, quiet thing that they do,” Selim tells Arab News. “Even in a scene where there’s literally 2,000 extras running by and propane bombs going off all around them.” Those moments can be difficult for myriad reasons, Selim explains. In the first episode of the Disney+ miniseries, for example, Selim was tasked with capturing the shocking death of Maria Hill, the beloved character played for 12 years by actress Cobie Smulders, at the hands of what appears to be Samuel L. Jackson’s iconic character Nick Fury. Saying goodbye after so long is difficult for a performer. Pulling that off as a director took not only skill, but empathy. “It was the biggest scene we filmed in the entirety of the eight-month shoot, and I just had to create a corner in that chaos where it’s all about her and her moment.