Amin Abbas Dubai

Catsaway, an animated feature-length film by Emirati director Fadel Saeed AlMuhairi, tells the tale of a group of stray cats that try to make a home in the UAE’s capital, Abu Dhabi, as the city grows around them during the ‘90s.

The movie features traditional hand-drawn animation rather than computer generated images making the movie’s visuals look classic.

The movie’s director said: “The idea of Catsaway began as a TV series pilot with a street cat and a human boy character. After realizing the challenges of getting a cat on camera (real vs. digital), I opted to tell the story of the street cat.”

“The main idea is to tell the story of my childhood in our beloved city of Abu Dhabi, through the eyes of street cats. The film is set in the early 2000 featuring much-loved, old landmarks such as the Volcano Fountain and the Old Souq, which vanished with the city’s development,” AlMuhairi said. “The movie will be a hair raising, paw-curling adventure full of surprises that awaits the cats in the least likely of places.”

The movie director said that his inspiration for the Catsaway film comes from his love for Japanese anime. He said that the anime cartoons he watched as a kid were a “a vital sort of entertainment and pure catalyst for our imagination.”

“My favorite anime series back in the day were Takarajima (Treasure Island) & Conan the Future Boy,” he added.

AlMuhairi said the he found the Japanese culture’s “devotion to their identity, culture, traditions and history” very inspirational.

Speaking about the challenges during the movie’s production, AlMuhairi said that locking down the idea of the film was the first challenge.

“Then came our second challenge, which was selling the story to raise a budget for the animation production. Thirdly, finding the right studio to execute the traditional animation style with a twist in the way I envisioned,” he said.

“Catsaway officially began pre-production early last year and now it’s in the production stage. The story will radiate heart-warming nostalgia with traditional animation style,” AlMuhairi added.

The Catsaway director said that the feedback for the film had been great so far and everyone was anticipating the release of the animation.

AlMuhairi expressed hopes that the movie would entertain audiences in regions outside the Middle East as well to show “that the UAE has strong creativity and talent in animation.”

‘Catsaway’ is being produced by Tent Pictures Productions, in cooperation with Juice Studios in Poland. After more than a year of pre-production work, the frames of the hand-drawn movie are now being put together under the creative eye of AlMuhairi, who also helmed ‘Abood Kandaishan’, which was nominated for 2014’s Muhr Emirati Award at Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF).

Tent Pictures was founded by AlMuhairi, and partners Mohamad M. Numan and Mohamad Jawad at twofour54 in 2013. It has already made several productions, with ‘Catsaway’ being its latest project.

AlMuhairi is also working on a future project about a “futuristic novel; in the far future when society decayed in the Arabian Peninsula, a great plague spread over land, we follow a fiercely independent, stubborn, and intelligent young lady who is a desert scavenger. She rebels to hunt for secret that will lead to the discovery of a sacred mystery protected by a secret cult for thousands of years.”