Reimagining History from Within: An Interview with Wael Shawky

Several months ago, as Israel and the United States launched military strikes against Iran, I found myself searching for a way to escape the relentless cycle of anxiety, grief, and uncertainty that had come to dominate everyday life. Like Jean-Dominique Bauby, the protagonist of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, whose imagination remained free even as his body was imprisoned, I retreated into memory. My thoughts returned to an artwork I had encountered more than a decade earlier – one that had remained with me ever since.

Around ten years ago, while visiting a museum in Lisbon, I wandered into a gallery screening a film unlike anything I had seen before. For almost an hour, marionettes recounted episodes from the Crusades through a remarkable synthesis of theatre, music, poetry, and historical narration. The work was visually captivating, but what lingered in my mind was something deeper: it challenged one of history’s defining conflicts by retelling it from an unfamiliar perspective. Rather than reproducing the conventional Western narrative, it invited viewers to inhabit an entirely different historical imagination. That work was Cabaret Crusades by the Egyptian artist Wael Shawky.

The parallels between the medieval conflicts depicted in Cabaret Crusades and the wars unfolding across today’s Middle East inevitably returned to me during those difficult weeks. I searched for the artist behind the work and immersed myself in the broader trajectory of his practice. What I discovered was not simply an accomplished visual artist, but one of the most distinctive, multidisciplinary voices to emerge from the contemporary Arab world. Shawky’s work has been celebrated internationally – from Tate Modern and the Louvre to Seoul, Doha, Venice, and recently Sydney and beyond – yet it remains deeply rooted in the histories, myths, languages, and cultural traditions of the Middle East.

Cabaret Crusades: The Horror Show File © Wael Shawky. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Lia Rumma, and Barakat Contemporary.

From Cabaret Crusades and Al Araba Al Madfuna to Oops… I Forgot Europe, Shawky consistently interrogates the ways history is constructed, remembered, and performed. Rather than treating history as a fixed archive of facts, he approaches it as a contested field of memory, performance, and storytelling, asking who has the authority to shape these narratives and whose voices remain unheard. Across a body of work that spans the Cabaret Crusades trilogy – The Horror Show Files (2010), The Path to Cairo (2012), and The Secrets of Karbalaa (2015) – to later projects like I Am Hymns of the New Temples (2024), he has continually reinvented his artistic vocabulary. His films evolve from the concentrated intimacy of marionette theatre into expansive cinematic spectacles, while his broader productions draw on Arabic poetry, ritual, and mythology, allowing each project to develop its own visual language rather than relying on a fixed artistic signature.

For me, as an Iranian, this encounter carried an added significance. Our understanding of contemporary Arab art is often remarkably limited, and Shawky’s work opened an entirely different window. It demonstrated that contemporary Arab art is neither stylistically unified nor easily categorised. His practice stubbornly resists conventional labels – whether filmmaker, theatre director, visual artist, composer, or performance maker – by moving effortlessly between film, theatre, opera, installation, sculpture, performance, puppetry, music, and writing, often designing the puppets, masks, costumes, lyrics, and visual environments himself.

This refusal of categorisation is nowhere more evident than in Drama 1882, Shawky’s monumental opera created for the 2024 Venice Biennale. Revisiting Ahmed ‘Urabi’s nationalist uprising and the subsequent British occupation of Egypt, the work rejects both nationalist triumphalism and familiar colonial narratives. Watching this immersive theatrical experience, in which music, choreography, and stylised movement become vehicles for historical reflection, I was inevitably reminded of another defining moment in the modern history of the Middle East: the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in the 1953 coup, orchestrated with the support of British and American intelligence agencies.

Although separated by more than 70 years and unfolding in different national contexts, the two histories reveal strikingly similar patterns of foreign intervention, contested sovereignty, and the repeated frustration of aspirations for political self-determination. Shawky’s response to this history lies not only in his choice of subject but also in the monumental scale and formal language of the work. History is not simply represented but re-performed, inviting audiences to experience the emotional, political, and cultural consequences of colonialism from within an Egyptian perspective. I was particularly struck by the performers’ highly controlled physicality: their restrained, pendulum-like movements suggest bodies suspended within history itself, unable to escape the forces that continue to shape the present. It is an image that resonates throughout Shawky’s practice, where history is never merely the past but a living condition that inhabits the body, language, and imagination.

When we spoke, Shawky was still working on completing his first feature film, centred on the discovery of oil in the Persian Gulf – another project examining the historical forces that have shaped the modern Middle East. Our conversation ranges across his evolving artistic practice, from puppetry and mythology to cinema, performance, and the search for an independent artistic language. Conducted at a moment when the region once again finds itself defined by war, the interview offers an opportunity to reflect on an artist whose work persistently asks how history can be retold, reclaimed, and reimagined from within.

(Special thanks to Lisson Gallery for providing preview access to Wael Shawky’s work.)

– H.S.

Much of your work explores origins: the Crusades, the formation of the Islamic world, and now the discovery of oil in the Persian Gulf. Before discussing those histories, I’d like to begin with your own. How did an artist from Alexandria arrive at this distinctive way of thinking about history – not simply telling it, but reconstructing it through theatre, music, sculpture and film?

I don’t even know where to begin because it is such a broad question.

I was born in Alexandria, but when I was very young my family moved to Saudi Arabia, so I spent a significant part of my childhood in Mecca. We lived very close to the Haram, near the Kaaba. Going for a walk simply meant walking between our house and the Haram. That was my everyday reality.

Cabaret Crusades: The Path to Cairo © Wael Shawky. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Lia Rumma, and Barakat Contemporary.

It was the late 1970s. As an Egyptian living in Mecca, I always felt that I belonged and didn’t belong at the same time. Being Arab doesn’t mean you automatically fit into every Arab culture. There are enormous differences between societies, and as a child I experienced those differences very directly.

At that time Saudi society – especially Mecca – was still deeply tribal and very traditional. I don’t mean that as a criticism. Mecca is actually one of the most cosmopolitan places in the world because people arrive there from everywhere, yet the local social structure remained remarkably conservative and self-contained.

At exactly the same moment, however, another transformation was taking place.

Saudi Arabia was entering a period of rapid modernisation, but it wasn’t simply modernisation – it was essentially an American model of modernity arriving inside a tribal society.

The result was extraordinary.

You could see a Bedouin man driving a Cadillac barefoot, and then returning home where his child rode a donkey. Nobody found that strange. Those two worlds coexisted perfectly naturally.

For me, it wasn’t simply a contradiction. They were two completely different systems operating simultaneously. They couldn’t really be reconciled, yet they somehow lived together.

As a child I obviously couldn’t analyse any of this, but looking back I’m convinced it shaped everything I’ve done since.

Almost all my work returns to similar questions: religion, power, sources of energy, the construction of history, and ultimately why people fight over particular ideas or places.

Coming from Egypt reinforced that contrast. Although most of Egypt is desert, Egyptian society is fundamentally agricultural. Everything revolves around the Nile. The psychology of Egyptian society developed around agriculture.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf operate according to a completely different historical logic.

Since I began making art, I’ve found myself repeatedly drawn to societies in transition – places dreaming of becoming something else.

Sometimes a Bedouin society dreams of becoming agricultural. Sometimes an agricultural society dreams of becoming urban. Sometimes an entire nation dreams of becoming modern.

Those dreams of transformation have become the structural backbone of almost every project I’ve made.

One of my earliest video works, The Cave (2005), already contains those ideas.

The film simply shows me walking through a supermarket in Istanbul while reciting the entire Surah Al-Kahf from the Qur’an. I don’t perform anything else. The shoppers had no idea what was happening. They were simply watching this man reciting scripture while pushing his way through supermarket aisles.

For me that film is almost a self-portrait. At the same time, it reflected Turkey during the early 2000s, when the country was caught between its ambition to join the European Union and its continuing attachment to the Islamic world.

Cabaret Crusades: The Secrets of Karbalaa © Wael Shawky. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Lia Rumma, and Barakat Contemporary.

I was interested in that coexistence of incompatible worlds. Even the Surah itself revolves around migration. Most Islamic scholars explain that Al-Kahf encourages people to leave home in order to gain knowledge and strength, then return and improve their own society. Moses himself travels to learn from Al-Khidr because there are forms of knowledge he doesn’t yet possess.

The whole Surah is about movement, knowledge and return. That idea has stayed with me ever since.

Growing up in Saudi Arabia, where there were no cinemas, what kinds of moving images shaped your imagination?

Although I spent about six years in Mecca, we returned to Alexandria every summer. My childhood was always divided between those two worlds.

Egyptian cinema dominated the Arab world, so even in Saudi Arabia the films we watched were mostly Egyptian. Later, video cassettes became available and expanded our choices, but for a long time our visual culture consisted mainly of Egyptian films alongside occasional European cinema. Ironically, the lack of choice became extremely important. Scarcity shapes imagination.

Around 2005 I began making a series called Telematch, consisting of several short films performed entirely by children. One of them, Telematch Sadat, reconstructs the assassination of President Anwar Sadat.

The important thing is that the children have absolutely no idea what they are reenacting. They don’t know who Sadat was. They don’t understand the political event. Because they don’t understand it, they never attempt psychological acting. The set simply becomes a playground. I would tell them, “Run from here to there,” or “Jump off the truck,” and they would do exactly that.

For adults, however, the images carry an entirely different emotional weight. When Sadat was assassinated I was still a child, but I watched the event live on television. I still remember the shaking camera, the smoke, the confusion. Those images stayed in my memory for decades. Eventually I realised I didn’t want to reproduce the event realistically. I wanted to reproduce memory itself. That is how Telematch Sadat emerged.

Drama, 1882 © Wael Shawky. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Lia Rumma, and Barakat Contemporary.

The title also comes directly from my childhood. There was a strange German television program called Telematch that was broadcast throughout Saudi Arabia. Every week teams from different German towns competed against one another wearing ridiculous padded costumes while running through obstacle courses.

It was simultaneously comic and highly structured. Because there was so little entertainment available, almost everyone watched it. Looking back, I think it had a much greater influence on me than I realised. It was essentially a theatrical contest performed for spectators. Perhaps that idea never left me.

Did becoming an artist ever feel like a choice?

Not really. Even in primary school everyone knew I was the child who drew. Whenever there was a school celebration or public event I was asked to paint the murals or decorate the walls. I’ve been doing that since I was about seven years old. So becoming an artist never surprised anyone around me.

The real surprise came later. When I entered the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria at 18, I discovered that art was much larger than drawing. Until then I thought being an artist simply meant producing beautiful images. I knew almost nothing about contemporary art.

Were there particular filmmakers or artists who shaped your thinking during those years?

At university I wasn’t really studying cinema. I was studying contemporary art. The interesting thing was that contemporary art hardly existed as an established field in Egypt then, but several of our professors had studied in Germany and returned deeply dissatisfied with the academic system.

They challenged everything. Because we had no internet, I had to educate myself through books. The Faculty of Fine Arts had a good library, but I spent even more time at the American Cultural Center and the British Council.

Those libraries became my real education. As for cinema, I admired Youssef Chahine and Shadi Abdel Salam enormously, and rather unexpectedly I also fell in love with Fellini.

Occasionally cultural centres screened European films, and once in a while we would see Scorsese, but those opportunities were rare.

My real education came a little later. While I was still at university I travelled to America for the first time. After that I spent every summer there. My friends and I worked in restaurants or took whatever jobs we could find simply to finance three months of visiting museums and exhibitions. That became my real art school.

Like many artists from my generation, we inevitably built our education on Western art history. But eventually I realised that couldn’t be the destination. Western art history should simply become one chapter within a much larger human history.

Our responsibility is to construct new visual languages that emerge from our own cultures rather than merely repeating European models. That realisation eventually led me towards works like Telematch and later Cabaret Crusades.

What interests me is bringing together cinema, music, literature, theatre, sculpture and craft into a single language. I’m still searching for that language.

I am Hymns of the New Temples © Wael Shawky. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Lia Rumma, and Barakat Contemporary.

One of the remarkable things about Cabaret Crusades is that its visual language continually evolves. The first film employs historic European marionettes; the second turns to ceramic figures and Islamic miniature painting; the third uses Murano glass. It feels as though the changing materials are inseparable from the history itself. How did that language emerge?

Every project eventually discovers its own material language.

Scale, location, historical subject and even budget all influence the form.

But Cabaret Crusades was the moment when I realised marionettes weren’t simply a practical solution. They were the correct language for the history I wanted to tell.

Everything really began when I read Pope Urban II’s speech at the Council of Clermont. I became fascinated by the rhetoric itself. He wasn’t simply calling people to war. He promised them fertile lands, wealth and a better life in the East, while simultaneously assuring them that dying during the Crusade guaranteed salvation. Reading the speech, I found myself asking a question that remained with me throughout the project.

Was Pope Urban manipulating people? Or was he himself also trapped within much larger historical forces?

That question gradually became more important than the Crusades themselves. History began to appear as a vast system of manipulation, where individuals believe they are making free decisions while simultaneously being driven by political, religious and economic forces that exceed them.

That naturally led me to marionettes. Marionettes are manipulated, but they also create the illusion that they possess agency. They become a perfect metaphor for history itself.

The first chapter functions almost like an introduction. It covers only a short period – from Urban’s speech to the capture of Jerusalem in 1099.

Although I was already approaching the Crusades from an Arab perspective, most surviving sources for that period were European. The principal figures were Pope Urban II, Peter the Hermit and the leaders of the First Crusade, so it felt completely appropriate to work with historical European marionettes.

Through the support of the Pistoletto Foundation we discovered the extraordinary Luppi Collection in Turin. Many of those marionettes were nearly 200 years old. They were no longer functional, so we carefully restored them, redesigned their costumes specifically for filming and, once production finished, returned them to their original condition.

It became a beautiful collaboration between conservation and filmmaking. Even the scenography followed European traditions. The spaces were constructed according to Renaissance perspective, producing a world that belonged visually to the same civilisation that had generated the historical sources.

Cabaret Crusades: The Horror Show File © Wael Shawky. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Lia Rumma, and Barakat Contemporary.

Everything changes in the second film because the history itself changes. Jerusalem has already fallen. The narrative shifts inward toward the fragmentation of the Muslim world: negotiations, betrayals, rival dynasties and rulers who repeatedly collaborate with the Crusaders against one another.

Unfortunately, those patterns still feel painfully familiar today. At that point I could rely much more heavily on Arab historians such as Usama ibn Munqidh and Ibn al-Athir.

The visual language changed with the sources. Instead of Renaissance painting, I turned toward Persian and Islamic miniature painting, particularly historical maps and city views by figures such as Matrakçı Nasuh and al-Idrisi.

Those images suggested an entirely different theatrical space. Instead of deep perspective, they create layered worlds in which foreground and background exist almost simultaneously.

I wanted the audience to experience history differently. The marionettes also became increasingly grotesque. That was entirely deliberate. I wanted to move further away from the emotional conventions of historical cinema.

Actors naturally invite identification. Marionettes already reduce that possibility. By making them stranger – sometimes almost animal-like – I also prevented audiences from dividing the story into simple heroes and villains. The animal qualities don’t represent evil. They represent instinct. Crusaders and Muslim rulers share exactly the same human instincts. The ceramic material carried another meaning.

Clay occupies an extraordinary place in religious thought. In Islam, Christianity and Judaism humanity is created from clay. Greek mythology contains similar ideas. There seemed to be something profoundly appropriate about telling this history through clay bodies.

The material also emerged from the place where we were working. The film was produced in Aubagne, in southern France, a region famous for its santons – small clay figures traditionally made for churches. I loved the idea of taking such a deeply Christian craft tradition and transforming it into marionettes that speak classical Arabic while recounting the Crusades from an Arab perspective.

The third chapter required another transformation. Historically, the narrative becomes much more complex.

The assassination of Imad al-Din Zengi leads to the rise of Nur al-Din, but in order to understand that period I also had to return to the Battle of Karbala and the Sunni-Shia division, while eventually arriving at the conflict between the Catholic and Orthodox churches during the Fourth Crusade.

The Path to Cairo © Wael Shawky. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Lia Rumma, and Barakat Contemporary.

History itself becomes increasingly layered. That complexity led me toward Murano glass. On one level, glass refers directly to Venice. Without Venice there would have been no Fourth Crusade. Venetian finance, shipping and political interests completely redirected the expedition. Unable to pay their debts, the Crusaders first attacked Zara and eventually Constantinople, producing one of history’s greatest ironies: a Crusade that devastated one of Christianity’s greatest cities.

Glass, however, also carried another meaning. Around that time I was reading José Saramago’s The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. There is a passage in which Jesus asks why humanity was not created from light instead of such fragile material.

That question stayed with me. Human beings possess extraordinary intelligence and imagination, yet remain astonishingly fragile. Glass expresses both conditions simultaneously. It is transparent and beautiful, but it can disappear instantly. Those marionettes spend their brief existence fighting wars, pursuing power and believing they control history, even though they can shatter at any moment.

The trilogy also grew enormously in scale. How did you persuade so many institutions to support such an ambitious project?

Funding contemporary art follows a completely different logic from commercial cinema. It would be impossible for me to approach a traditional film producer and ask for millions of dollars to make an experimental trilogy with marionettes.

The first chapter succeeded because a small network of foundations and patrons believed in the idea itself. The Pistoletto Foundation gave us a production space in Biella, and several European cultural organisations helped make the project possible.

The budget wasn’t large, but it was exactly what we needed. The second chapter benefited from a remarkable historical coincidence. Marseille-Provence became the European Capital of Culture, and public institutions were commissioning ambitious international projects.

Because the first film had already been successful, organisations in Aubagne and Marseille wanted to become co-producers. At exactly the same time, Documenta 13, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev invited the second chapter to premiere there. The sequel already had an international platform before we even finished making it. The third film emerged under similarly fortunate circumstances.

Its production coincided with my first major exhibition at MoMA PS1. Once museums and galleries recognised the scale of the project, larger institutions and collectors became willing to support it.

Without the first film none of that would have happened. Growing a project inside the contemporary art world is an extremely gradual institutional process.

Cabaret Crusades: The Secrets of Karbalaa © Wael Shawky. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Lia Rumma, and Barakat Contemporary.

Although Cabaret Crusades draws on European marionette traditions, the Middle East has its own rich history of puppetry and shadow theatre, particularly the plays of Ibn Dāniyāl. At the same time, Japan has developed its own distinctive puppet traditions, from bunraku to productions such as NHK’s Puppet Theater: Three Kingdoms. Were any of these non-European traditions part of your artistic research, and if so, how did they shape your approach to the trilogy?

When I first began working with marionettes I tried very hard to research their history in Egypt. Surprisingly, I found very little material specifically related to Egyptian marionettes.

Ancient Egypt has an extraordinary history of figurines and sculptural objects, especially those placed in tombs, but that isn’t quite the same thing. Modern marionette traditions seem largely to have arrived from Europe.

By contrast, I found much richer traditions in Iran and Turkey, particularly shadow theatre.

I spent time studying those forms as well. In the end, however, my own framework remained closer to European marionettes. What interested me was transforming that tradition rather than reproducing it.

One of the most important changes involved the eyes. European marionettes already had moving mouths. I wanted mine to blink. That tiny movement changes everything.

A marionette says a sentence, slowly closes its eyes, then opens them again. Suddenly it appears to think. It appears to react. It becomes alive. For me that simple gesture completely transformed the relationship between the puppet and the audience.

Your work is extraordinarily rich in historical, literary and religious references. Do you ever worry that audiences might find it inaccessible?

Not really. I don’t think every viewer has to understand everything. What matters is that everyone discovers an entry point. For some people that entry point is history. For others it is music. Others respond simply to the images.

Beauty remains very important to me. Even when I deal with violence, death or war, I don’t want the work to become detached from aesthetic pleasure. People need something that draws them inside.

If someone watches carefully, researches the historical references and spends time with the work, they will certainly discover many additional layers. But that isn’t necessary. Children often enjoy watching the marionettes without understanding anything about the Crusades.

That experience is equally valid. I remember hearing Thomas Hirschhorn speak about this years ago. He said he wanted everyone – not only curators, professors or specialists – to find something inside the work. I’ve always felt very close to that idea.

My own experience changed as I moved from Cabaret Crusades to works such as Al Araba Al Madfuna and Oops… I Forgot Europe. Those projects seem much less concerned with dramatic action than with narration and storytelling. Was that shift intentional?

Very much so. One thing I enjoy is moving in the opposite direction from whatever I’ve just done. What’s interesting is that Cabaret Crusades and Al Araba Al Madfuna were actually being developed at the same time. They belong to exactly the same period of my life.

What interested me was the contrast. Cabaret Crusades asks how we read history. Al Araba Al Madfuna asks how we read literature.

It grew out of my admiration for the Egyptian writer Muhammad Mustajab. His stories fascinated me because they constantly move between the visible and the invisible, the material and the metaphysical. Around that time I had become deeply interested in people who claimed they could communicate with jinn, heal through spiritual powers, discover hidden treasure beneath the earth, or see things invisible to ordinary people.

These beliefs exist throughout the Middle East, and I’m sure there are similar traditions in Iran as well. In Egypt they are often connected to ancient archaeology. Some people genuinely believe they possess spiritual abilities that allow them to locate buried treasures.

What fascinated me wasn’t whether those claims were true. It was the relationship between invisible systems and material reality.

How does someone use something completely intangible in order to reach something entirely physical?

Mustajab’s writing constantly inhabits that space. My own encounters with Sufism, healers and spiritual practices led me towards exactly the same questions. Human beings seem to live simultaneously in two worlds. One is visible. The other is imagined, spiritual or metaphysical.

Whether we call it the soul, angels, jinn or the afterlife, almost every culture believes that another reality exists alongside the material one. That duality became the organising principle of Al Araba Al Madfuna.

Everything in the films is built upon doubles. Children tell adult stories. Adult voices emerge from children’s bodies. The performers are unmistakably children, yet they wear moustaches and embody adults. One thing is seen while another is heard. Two realities coexist. For me that reflects human existence itself. We’re constantly moving between what we can touch and what we can only imagine.

That is why Al Araba Al Madfuna differs so completely from Cabaret Crusades. One explores the construction of history. The other explores the translation of literature into cinema.

Oops… I Forgot Europe belongs somewhere else again. It was really an experiment before I Am Hymns of the New Temples.

I wanted to create a work built around a single masked figure delivering an enormous story with complete seriousness, almost like a television newsreader. The form resembles reportage, but because of the context it becomes something else. In that sense it connects back to The Cave.

I’m always interested in how changing the context completely transforms meaning. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy moving from one form to another. Each project teaches me a different language.

I am Hymns of the New Temples © Wael Shawky. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Lia Rumma, and Barakat Contemporary.

One of the striking things about Drama 1882 is that it feels like the beginning of a much larger historical project. Do you see it as the first chapter of a broader series?

Yes, absolutely. We’re already discussing two further films.

The first would be Drama 1919, centred on the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 and Saad Zaghloul. I would probably describe it as the most successful revolution in modern Egyptian history. The second would be Drama 1952, dealing with the revolution – or coup, depending on how one chooses to describe it – led by Gamal Abdel Nasser.

That moment transformed Egypt. It marked the transition from monarchy to military rule, whose consequences continue to shape the country today. Many of those changes had already begun after 1948, but 1952 accelerated them dramatically.

Egypt’s relationship with the wider Arab world changed. Its relationship with the Soviet Union changed.

Nasser himself became an enormously influential figure throughout the region. In many ways these films continue the questions that interested me in Cabaret Crusades.

The Crusades begin as the story of an external power attempting to conquer a region. Gradually the real story becomes internal. Political rivalries. Competing systems. Societies consuming themselves from within.

That is what interests me now. What happens after liberation? What happens after independence? Those are the questions I want to explore.

Listening to you, I’m struck by how often your work questions accepted versions of history. Whether you’re dealing with the Crusades, 19th century Egypt or the Persian Gulf, you’re continually asking how historical narratives are constructed. Is that ultimately what connects these projects?

I think so. The Gulf project is still developing, so I don’t yet know exactly where it will lead.

What fascinates me is that so much of its history survives through oral traditions. Even where written histories exist, modern states often construct narratives that support particular national identities. That doesn’t necessarily make those histories false. It simply means we have to approach them critically. The further back we go, the more fragmented everything becomes. We’re dealing with oral traditions, archaeology, scattered written documents and mythology.

At that point mythology becomes inseparable from history. I find that relationship incredibly interesting. We often imagine mythology and history as opposites.

I’m not sure they are. History also depends upon interpretation. We always try to be accurate, but we’re working with incomplete evidence. Every generation reconstructs the past differently because new evidence appears and new questions emerge.

In that sense history is never fixed. It is always being rewritten. Perhaps that is why I don’t see mythology as the opposite of history. Both are ways human beings construct meaning from fragments. Both are attempts to understand the world. That tension – between fact and interpretation, memory and imagination – is something I continue to explore, and I suspect I always will.

Your current project on the discovery of oil in the Persian Gulf also seems to mark another new direction. What form is it taking?

I think it will become something closer to a play. This time I’m working with adult performers, which already changes everything. If I had to describe it, I would say it exists somewhere between Cabaret Crusades and Drama 1882. One thing that fascinated me while making Drama 1882 was the performers’ movement.

They almost seemed to learn from marionettes. They don’t perform psychologically. They don’t try to express emotion in the conventional cinematic sense. Instead they appear almost hypnotised. They’re reenacting history rather than interpreting it.

The historical event itself becomes a performance. That theatrical quality is reinforced by the camera. Most of the time it observes from one side, almost like a spectator sitting in a theatre or cabaret. You’re always aware that what you’re watching has been staged.

That awareness is important because history itself is also staged. When I’m researching the Gulf project I spend time with historians, archaeologists and geologists.

Very often someone discovers a single object and immediately an entire historical narrative begins to form around it. A king must have existed. He must have ruled in this way.

People must have dressed like this. Then two years later another discovery is made and suddenly everything changes. The previous certainty disappears. That’s how history works.

What we call history is not necessarily what happened. It’s what has survived.

It’s what can be reconstructed from the evidence available at a particular moment. Every reconstruction is provisional. Every reconstruction reflects a particular perspective. That process interests me enormously. Art also reconstructs. It doesn’t simply reproduce reality. It proposes another way of reading it.

When the project was announced it sounded as though filming had already finished, but it seems it is still evolving.

We had to stop for a while because of the wars and the instability in the region. It simply wasn’t the right moment to continue.

Now we’re back. My team is here and production has started again.