By Anas Alyusuf

ALULA — Hollywood film Kandahar has wrapped up after two months of filming in Saudi Arabia last week.

The action-thriller is one of the biggest US features to be shot entirely in AlUla, which is home to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hegra.

All eyes were on AlUla, which hosted the entire film crew for more than two months, when the movie stars got into social media to post pictures of the untouched region, which is full with heritage sites.

“Kandahar” is being directed by Ric Roman Waugh, who is best known for directing films such as “Angel Has Fallen,” “Felon,” and “Greenland.”

The film, starring Scottish actor Gerard Butler, is based on a screenplay written by Waugh and Mitchell LaFortune, a former military intelligence officer who served in Iraq.

Mitchell’s experiences while working for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan served as an inspiration for the story.

Bulter portrays the character of Tom Harris, a CIA agent based in the Middle East whose cover is blown after an intelligence leak reveals the nature of his classified mission.

Harris and his translator are trapped in hostile territory and must fight their way out of the desert to an extraction point in Kandahar, Afghanistan, all the while evading the attention of the elite special forces on the hunt for them.

Waugh explained to Saudi Gazette how he happened to choose AlUla as a location to shoot this picture. “We were looking for several locations for this picture in the Middle East. When I saw the photos of AlUla, my immediate response was, ‘Oh my God, yes let’s go shoot there’. The photos do no justice; it’s a breathtakingly beautiful place.”

He said: “I never knew about AlUla and I completely fell in love with it. In a selfish way, I’m glad to be one of the first to shoot here.”

“Authenticity breathes authenticity; I don’t think we would have the same picture if we filmed in the United States or Spain,” Waugh added.

He also highlighted the role of the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), represented by Film AlUla, in facilitating the filming of this movie. “This would never have happened without our partnership with the RCU and the Ministry of Culture. They offered a lot of love, dedication and patience that drove us all to make this movie happen,” Waugh said.

He described the diversity of the cast as extraordinary, as they had more than 25 different nationalities within the crew. Also, he said that “we didn’t have one person to quit this picture.”

Scott LaStaiti, executive producer of “Kandahar,” said he didn’t need a lot of convincing to come to AlUla for this picture. “I was interested in this part of the world and it was an interesting challenge as no one ever did a big Hollywood movie here before.”

He added, “The biggest positive aspect of doing this picture here is that the RCU were tremendous partners not just financially but on other levels also. Stephen Strachan, the Film Commissioner at Film AlUla, is one of the hardest working guys I know.”

“We found a lot of great people here and got advantage of all the resources.”