Read More @HJ Reviews: A Janitor with a Pilot's Hat Darrel Manson

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.

Abu Raed is a man of great wisdom and compassion, and eventually we see his great courage. Did you have a particular model in mind for him?

I think my grandfather who passed away in 2005, in January that year when I started writing the movie. He was 93 years old. He was a doctor who worked in downtown Amman. He'd traveled the world; he was educated in Switzerland, and he was very sophisticated. He spoke German and French, and he recited poetry, and he played the violin, and he'd flown airplanes. But you would never know it by looking at him. He was such a humble guy. He always looked at things. He was always learning. He passed away; he was 93. And he always looked at things with wide open eyes like a kid, you know. And for me that was kind of what I was trying to have in Abu Raed. And then [lead actor] Nadim [Sawalha] brought his own sort of humility that he had. It was a collection of things. And, of course, in terms of story structure, it's very imbedded in the mythology of the hero's journey. You know, the kind of thing that Joseph Campbell talks about -- the reluctant hero who's confronted with a problem. First he denied it, then he lives up to it, then he has to face it and then it's sacrifice and rebirth in the form of Murad [one of the children], metaphorically speaking.

As I watched this from a Christian perspective, although I wouldn't want to force him into a Christ-figure, there are certainly aspects of it. The image I had as he sits with the children telling them stories are the kind of things the Gospels tell about Jesus having the children come to him.

I have to say that it's not a coincidence that there are twelve kids. You know, the metaphor is there. It's not on the nose, but it is there -- the sacrifice and all that. So the spiritual aspect of the film has always been intentional. Subtle, but intentional.

What about your future? Will you focus on writing, or direction or both?

I'm a writer and a director. I'm writing another film, an American film, with similar qualities that I hope will be made soon that I'll get to direct, maybe later this year or early next year. I plan to continue also making Jordanian movies because there's such a gap and a need for quality films from that part of the world.

And I'm also turning this into a novel as well because so many people have expressed interest in learning more about the man's history. So I'm actually doing a adaptation based on the movie and all the stories that I created in my head for the character -- to flesh out his history as a kid growing up in that neighborhood, because there are times in the movie when Abu Raed goes up to the kids and I feel like he's just one of the kids who's going up to them to play with them, like the moment when they turn away from him and don't want him to play with them and he give the hat to Murad. These are moments when I got really emotional writing the screenplay, but of course when you write a screenplay you're really minimal on the use of words. But I love writing so I think that with a book you can elaborate and bring more thoughts, express more inner thoughts through a novel that you don't get a chance to do in a movie. Likewise, I show his relationship with his wife, who has passed away, in the book and how he used to collect things. There are some really nice little stories that I created and just love, but they don't belong in a movie. I plan to make movies, but I'm also novelizing Captain Abu Raed.