A new UAE superhero
Home-grown animation ‘Emara: Emirates Hero’ will air as a five-episode miniseries this year
Walk into any toy store, and you’ll see action figurines stacked in the boy’s section and doll houses reserved for the girls. But now, women are decimating the myth that superheroes are just for men.
DC film Wonder Woman made a record-breaking $100.5 million (Dh369 million) in America this month, becoming the best domestic box-office debut by a female director. Meanwhile, much closer to home, 22-year-old Emirati director Fatma Al Muhairi has been doing everything in her power to put Arab female superheroes on the map, starting with Emara: Emirates Hero.
The five-episode cartoon, aimed at audiences 12 and above, follows 19-yearold Moza as she delves undercover and transforms into superhero Emara. Clad in a navy blue headscarf, a green, white and gold costume, a cape lined with red, and golden specs inspired by the burqa (a traditional, metal-like cloth worn around the eyes by Emirati women), Emara fights crime on the busy, bustling streets of the UAE.
The miniseries, originally set to release during Ramadan, has been pushed back until an undisclosed date later this year. Only a 78-second intro can be found online, but Emara has already amassed a loyal fan base: they create fan art, manufacture fake trailers and, in the case of 32-year-old Shaima Al Ali, begin petitions to have Emara shown on Netflix.
Al Ali told tabloid! she saw a promo on Twitter for Emara, a show “made by Emiratis about an Emirati superhero with a female main character,” and, as a selfprofessed geek and feminist, she was sold. On May 30, she posted an online plea directed to Netflix via Avaaz.org, a website for community petitions. It received more than 2,000 signatures in less than two weeks.
tabloid! sent a link to a Netflix Mena representative, but the streaming service has not responded to several requests for comment. Al Muhairi, though not directly involved with the petition, is on-board with the idea of having her show on Netflix, and would generally be more comfortable releasing it through a streaming service. “But I feel like it needs to be on TV if just