Hegra: City of the Nabataeans
As if a lens had been there two thousand years ago
Two thousand years ago, Hegra was a city full of life: carvers hanging on ropes against the rock faces, caravans unloading at the wells with frankincense and myrrh, and families carving homes for their dead that would outlast the houses of the living.
This film doesn't explain Hegra with maps or motion graphics; it stands where its people stood. It moves at the real pace of life, the way wildlife films do: the camera watches and never intervenes, and the narration stays sparse so the image can speak.
We watch a façade being born from the top down, blow by blow, and see the chisel lines still visible on the stone today at the moment they were cut. We watch a master teach his son to read the grain of the rock, and a caravan pushing on through a sandstorm.
It is the third side of our Hegra project, after One place through the ages and the film Return to Hegra: the first lets you stand in the place across time, the second tells it as fantasy, and this film witnesses it as it was.
- Place
- Hegra, AlUla
- Time
- Between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD
- Style
- Real-time pace, sparse narration
- Status
- Teaser complete; the film is in production
Shots from the work
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