Amin Matalqa was born in Amman, Jordan, but came to the United States when he was 13. He has now made the first Jordanian feature film that is being exported to the world, Captain Abu Raed, which won the Audience Award for World Cinema at Sundance. I was able to talk with him before his film played at the Newport Beach Film Festival.

Let me ask you about Jordanian film. Why haven't there been more Jordanian films?

People ask me that, and I don't know. All I know is that back in the 80s there was some interest to try to build up something towards that, and whatever studios that were built, or sound stages that were built, were absorbed by Jordan television and those resources ended up being part of TV, so there was never another push to launch a film industry until now.

Were there challenges in trying to make a film in Jordan without the movie infrastructure?

You know, there are pros and cons. I think the pros outweigh the cons because we were able to put together the team of people -- whatever resources we didn't have we brought from outside, like from Los Angeles or from Germany. We brought the camera from Germany, and some of the crew department heads were from abroad who had experience doing this. But what really worked so much in our favor was that everybody was so enthusiastic about having this movie and filming it and doing it. There was a lot of energy that was very spiritual as an experience for all of us that I don't know if you can have on a movie where you're, you know, shooting a movie every . . . when you're launching a new movie every week. So because it's something new to Jordan, we had a very enthusiastic cast and crew.

Was there a challenge in using so many children? This is your first feature film and having so many non-professional children, was that a challenge?

Yeah, definitely. The first day I walked into the room after having met with these kids originally in different places because they all came from refugee camps&ellips;. I went to the different camps and met with them while I was casting. A couple of weeks before production started we had someone gather them all up from the different camps to bring them over to our production offices. And that was the first time I realized, "Oh, my God, I cast like the rowdiest, feistiest group." They each had their own character. You put them all in one room and it was suddenly like, "Oh, my God, what have I gotten myself into?"

But I have to say that once we started rehearsing and I started working with them -- separate from everyone else, just working with the kids -- it's an addictive experience because you start learning from the kids, and you start learning how to communicate with them. You start learning how they look up to you, and you become friends. And after the first week of shooting our communications was nonverbal. They'd look at me and they'd know exactly what I was going for. I'd say like one or two words, and they're like, "got it," and they'd do it. We do like three takes and move on. It was amazing. It was so good that I hope to go back and make another movie with the same kids. They're really inspiring for me.

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