This is the true story of Palestinian Mohammed Asaf, who overcame many obstacles to win Arab Idol in 2013.
The film starts with Asaf as a kid, playing music for weddings for his little sister. She dies from kidney failure, giving Asaf the motivation to leave Palestine and audition for the show when he grows up (he’s played by Tawfeek Barhorn as an adult).
I’ll say this; the movie is much better than the American Idol movie, From Justin to Kelly. That said, it still isn’t very good. It has a disease-of-the-week movie feel in the first half, and feels like a movie we’ve seen many times before in it’s second half. The kids are cute enough, but the movie definitely loses its way before credits roll, and Barhorn isn’t a very engaging performer.
The final moments flip to the actual Asaf winning Idol, which got me to thinking that the filmmakers would’ve been better off had they just gone the documentary route. Watching footage of Asaf triumph is enough.