Netflix premiere for resident's documentary on influencers

Dubai - His movie had its worldwide premiere on Netflix on Friday.

Suffering a failed business idea, facing complications while relying on people for projects, and being broke and jobless - all of this led to Dubai-based filmmaker Asri Bendacha's first full-length documentary feature Follow Me.
An hour and 16-minute long fun, yet hard-hitting documentary that analyses social media influencer behaviour, and the power they hold in the Middle East, Follow Me is the result of one man's tireless effort to make this movie. Bendacha is the co-writer, co-producer, director, provided the voice over, music producer, and editor of this documentary.
What's more? Bendacha is the first independent UAE-based documentary filmmaker to have his work featured on the world's biggest online streaming service - Netflix. His movie had its worldwide premiere on Netflix on Friday, according to tweets from the Dubai Media Office.
Bendacha credited Jamal Al Sharif, chairman of the Dubai Film Commission, who is featured in the documentary, and his co-producer Philip Alberstat (also featured), producer of movies Incredible Mrs Ritchie and Cold Blooded, for making the Netflix dream, a reality.
How it began?
Khaleej Times caught up with the French- Algerian movie maker after the Netflix release to speak about his journey throughout shooting and editing the documentary. Born to a French-Algerian family in France, Bendacha came to the UAE in 2012. "I came here to launch a musical event called the Dubai International Music Awards (Dima), a project that didn't take off. At least not yet," laughed Bendacha.
"When I first came to Dubai, I thought everything is easy and cool. Over time, the issues began creeping up and I was broke," he added. In 2016, while job hunting on LinkedIn, Bendacha found an article posted by the media agency BPG regarding reading social influencers and their revenue models. "It got me wondering, how do they make so much money. And here I'm working hard every day, and still broke," he added.
Bendacha interviewed Taghreed Oraibi, a group account director with BPG.
"My first interview was with her. She provided me with a lot of information to get started, and she was also the first person I interviewed. I began to reach out to influencers, and that is when I started to film and interview people, going to events with influencers," A month later, when Bendacha looked at his footage, he realised he had enough to start work on a documentary.
One-man show
The documentary was shot in Dubai, Los Angeles, Miami, Boston, San Francisco, and London. From interviewing some of the top social media influencers in the region to interviewing Ethan Zuckerman, director of civic media at MIT, the documentary is thoroughly researched and provides an in-depth insight into influencer behaviour, consumer patterns, social media revenue models, and the psychology behind a selfie.
Speaking about how Bendacha found enough influencers for his documentary, he laughed and said: "I would wake up in the mornings. Look at the trending hashtag for the day on Instagram, search for the most popular posts or posts with most likes with that hashtag, locate the influencer who posted the image, and then look at their geotag location, and drive to meet the influencer in-person and ask them if they would like to be interviewed. It was like chasing Pokemon on the game Pokemon Go!" 
For Bendacha, one of the benefits of working on the documentary by himself was that he did not have to depend on a team to deliver. He said: "There is no planning required when you're working alone. When you're alone, you go with the flow." The entire documentary took a total of 16 months from conception to final draft.
The documentary also got the filmmaker into some legal trouble with Instagram, sending him a legal notice, asking him to remove contents related to the company from the film. "It's something I am proud of. A huge company sitting in San Francisco had taken notice of me. I suppose, they wanted to prevent something that was going to be said," he added.
dhanusha@khaleejtimes.com

• UAE
• Dubai