Music

Soundtrack

Shamim Sarif on the Soundtrack

The movie is contemporary and urban, but also romantic - we wanted to reflect all that in the songs. I always felt the film would contain many songs that would act as part of the score. Leonie Casanova was the first person I approached, because I really rate her song writing and performance very highly. She had composed a new song called Little Feeling which worked beautifully and she then agreed to re-record another of her other songs especially for the movie. Nadine Khouri is another immensely talented singer-songwriter whose songs fit into the mood of the film so well. And we licensed a few songs, including two beautiful Arabic-language songs from Natacha Atlas and an exuberant song from Alabina for the opening scene. And nothing fit the mood and storyline of this movie better than I Kissed a Girl. We had trouble licensing the songs we had wanted in Arabic over the first love scene though. And so Hanan asked me to work on a song, which a friend, Zina Haj-Hasan then translated and which our composer Raiomond Mirza wrote the music for. And inspired by that, I co-wrote another song for the film with Raiomond, which Leonie recorded for us. Raiomond produced several songs and a score that show an amazing breadth and depth of range.

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