We haven’t heard much from the celebrated Emirati filmmaker Ali F. Mostafa for a while, but it turns out the trailblazer has been quietly doing what he does best – working on a landmark new TV show ‘Khattaf‘ about an Emirati MMA fighter, starring his very own brother, actor Mohammed Mostafa.
The Hijack and The Ambush star announced the release of the Khattaf trailer on his Instagram yesterday, teasing the new Abu Dhabi TV that will be released soon.
Khattaf, follows the story of an aspiring Emirati MMA fighter, who, against the wishes of his friends and family, fights his way to the top in one of the most unforgiving sport on the planet. The Arabic-language show, filmed in both Abu Dhabi and Thailand, sees the reprising collaboration of director Ali Mostafa and his brother Mohammed into something that looks really quite special.
The film comes amid much ground swell in the growing MMA scene in the Middle East. With the first major MMA event of the year having taken place in Riyadh last week, it is no secret that the Middle East is doing everything to make this part of the world the new, unequivocal fight capital on the planet, and this will be the first scripted iteration of the fastest growing sport on the planet. Oh, and much like an Emirati Tom Cruise or Jackie Chan, Mostafa does all his own stunts.
“That was something that was important to me,” Mohammed Mostafa told Esquire Middle East back in December 2023. “The stunt coordinator, Najmeddin Scorpion, has worked with Jackie Chan and Zac Efron, so I wanted to push myself to go up a level both as an actor, and as an athlete.”
Back then, most of the information about the series remained a tight-guarded secret, and information on it remains spares, but from what has been released, the scale and the expectation of the Arab-language project has all the potential to make significant waves in the regional film industry. “This is the biggest thing I have done film-wise, and I think is going to be game changer,” says Mostafa.
Compared to the choreography of ’80s and ’90s “classics” like the Jean Claude Van-Damme or Steven Seagal films, making MMA look realistic on film is very difficult, simply because the sport is anything but choreographed. Rarely do punches, kicks, takedowns, or submissions land perfectly, and more often than not, the movement of fighters are unpredictable, unorthodox, and far from the iterations shown on scripted shows. Still, from the brief glimpses we’ve been given of Kattaf, it’s obvious that, for once, some actual MMA fighters have been consulted in how to make things look as realistic as possible.
The public perception of MMA has quickly shifted from ‘barbaric cage brawlers’ to ‘respected sport,’ and such is evident in the continuous film and television iterations. Frank Grillo’s MMA show, Kingdom ran for 3 seasons, and Warrior, perhaps the most known MMA film, starred Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton, gave viewers the satisfying mix of ‘bullies gets bullied’ alongside family drama, such is evident as this clip below, which has racked up 17M views (who doesn’t love seeing the sh*t-talker get his ass kicked?).
As UFC president Dana White has repeated time and time again, ‘fighting is the oldest sport in the world’, and whatever your views on the brutal sport may be, if a fight takes place, whether on a screen or in person, like some compulsive magnetism, you simply can’t help but watch. Plus, in the eyes of the classic Hollywood underdog story, what sport better depicts the overcoming of odds than fighting?
“There is no tomorrow!” Apollo Creed yells at Rocky when he doesn’t feel like training.
A true Emirati Rocky-like story, Khattaf will be a dynamic, blood pumping inclusion into the UAE’s rapidly growing cultural scene. Having filmed, and trained, in Abu Dhabi for Khattaf, perhaps we’ll see Mostafa sitting next to Dana White, or any of the other A-listers, at the next Emirati UFC event(s).
Khattaf is coming soon to Abu Dhabi TV
