Tag: film

Turkey Hosts First International Migration Film Festival

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Hosted by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the inaugural International Migration Film Festival was an opportunity to shine a light on the plight of refugees and the role of film in telling migrant stories. 

Turkey has an acute interest in the world’s response to the refugee crisis, being home to the largest number of refugees in the world. Estimated at approximately four million, Turkey’s refugee population includes 3.6 million people from neighboring Syria. 

The week-long festival was originally scheduled to take place in April in the city of Gaziantep, home to approximately 500,000 refugees. However, organizers moved it online due to the coronavirus crisis. From June 14-21, 45 films from 30 countries were available to stream online. 

The festival also comprised online masterclasses, which were open primarily to refugees and migrants, on the art of filmmaking and storytelling. Participants had the opportunity to learn from Bosnian director Danis Tanovic, Mexican producer and writer Michel Franco, and three time Oscar-winning British costume designer Sandy Powell. 

The festival’s Instagram featured talks by American actor and director Danny Glover, Iranian-American actor Shabab Hosseini, and American actor and director Matt Dillon. Regarding the festival’s vast offerings, director of programming Hulya Sungu said, “We hope to reach refugees around the world.”

Among the films featured at the festival were “For Sama,” the award-winning story of Waad al-Kateab’s life during the uprising in Aleppo and her family’s debates over whether to leave the city, and “Omar and Us,” the story of a retired Turkish Coast Guard captain who overcomes his prejudices to help his Syrian neighbors. 

Inaugural International Migration Film Festival winners 

“For Sama” won the award for Best Film with filmmaker al-Kateab, herself once a refugee in Turkey, advising audiences to watch the film to understand why refugees flee their homeland and the difficulties they face. 

Among the other films recognized at the festival were “Just Like My Son,” a story by Italian director Costanza Quatriglio that focuses on two brothers who escaped from Afghanistan for Europe, which won the Most Inspiring Script award, and “Children of the Shore” by Amelia Nanni, which won the UNICEF International Short Film award.

Nanni said the award encourages her to shoot her next film and she dedicated a share of her prize money to assisting creatives without access to support. She said, “I will share half of the price with other people, friends who do their arts in this crisis in a system where art is discredited and with friends in Belgium who don’t have the ‘right’ paper and passport to study there.” 

The full lineup and winners can be found on the festival website.  

Arab Filmmakers Embrace Genre Films

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On June 6, Netflix began streaming Tunisian cinema’s first horror movie, “Dachra.” The film’s move to Netflix follows a highly successful cinematic release in Tunisia where the movie smashed box-office records.  

Originally released in 2018, “Dachra” follows three journalism students seeking to unravel the 20-year mystery of a woman found partially mutilated and later committed to a psychiatric facility. As the students attempt to verify claims the woman is a witch, they are drawn into a reclusive community in the woods. 

The story mixes North African folklore, including the existence of Zouhri children whose blood is believed to release hidden treasures guarded by “djinns,” with heartstopping suspense and craftful filmmaking. It is the first feature film from actor, producer, and director Abdelhamid Bouchnak. 

Embracing genre to tell Arab stories 

“Dachra” is just one of a growing number of films from the MENA region to embrace the use of genre cinema, part of an emerging trend. 

Genre is a broad term that denotes films which utilize common themes or narratives such as thrillers, comedies, or science fiction. The term is increasingly used for fantasy and horror films as well. 

The growing recognition of, and interest in Arab genre cinema by international festivals and audiences alike is shattering stereotypes of what viewers can expect from Arab cinema. The use of genres by Arab filmmakers is not new, but has typically been overlooked by international audiences in the past. 

Foreign audiences have preferred Arab content in the form of social realism and hybrid documentaries. These productions, often rich in imagery of misery and destruction, promulgate the idea of a one-dimensional war-torn and problem-riddled Middle East. 

The use of genre in film, and in particular horror and fantasy, follow the trend of dystopian imagery that has emerged as a key component in contemporary Arab literature and art in the 21st century. With an increasing number of translations available, as well as original works in French and English, Arab authors have crafted a unique Arab dystopian genre. 

Constructed from Arab experiences, the genre deviates from its Western counterpart in a number of fundamental ways. Most notably, power structures used to repress find their basis in religion or bureaucracy rather than left or right political ideologies. 

Filmmakers also draw on local influences and histories when shaping characters and storylines in horror. In “Dachra,” Bouchnak invokes the practice of ritualistic sacrifice, as it is conceived in North Africa, to craft a story distinct from its Western counterparts.

Streaming increasing demand for Arab stories 

“Dachra” follows the move of the 2017 Tunisian film “La Belle et la Muete” (The Beauty and the Dog) onto Netflix, with the streaming platform continuing to increase engagement with content from the MENA region. 

Georges Schoucair of Abbout Productions in Lebanon credits the streaming giant with increasing demand for Arab genre content and “introducing audiences to non-English language films from the region.”

In May, Netflix announced an agreement with the Tunisian-Egyptian actress and producer Hend Sabry for an original Arabic-language series to be filmed in Egypt. The comedy-drama will be female-centred and is expected to be released in 2021. 

From June 11, the Saudi Arabian series “Whispers,” a dramatic-thriller, will be available to Netflix’s 183 million subscribers in 190 countries and 20 languages. 

Nuanced Arab Representation: Celebrating Female Film in the MENA Region

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The Sharjah Art Foundation, in collaboration with Habibi Collective, will host a series of virtual film screenings throughout June. The project will highlight the work of female filmmakers from across the MENA region and consist of a diverse array of short films, features, documentaries, and experimental movies. 

Habibi Collective 

Started by Roision Tapponi in 2018, Habibi Collective is a digital platform dedicated to archiving and promoting female filmmaking in the MENA. The daughter of an Iraqi father and Irish mother, Tapponi grew up in rural Ireland. She started the project following her realization that the mainstream films she watched lacked representation of Arab women and narratives that surrounded her during summers spent visiting family in Iraq.

Habibi Collective hosts its content on Instagram, making it free and highly accessible. The account currently has over 10,000 followers and prior to the outbreak of coronavirus had hosted film screenings for fans in London. Bringing the online community together in-person creates a space for dialogue and the further diffusion of the female-made films featured on the page, according to Tapponi. 

Highlighting the diversity of Arab cultures and experiences 

In 2020, the majority of mainstream media representations of Arab characters and culture remain deeply rooted in negative stereotypes that typecast Arabs as one-dimensional, simple figures. Entrenched in orientalist understandings of the MENA region, the men are cruel, weak-minded terrorists and the women either oppressed and voiceless, struggling against restrictive cultural norms, or exotic, muted subjects of the Western male gaze. 

These stale representations deprive characters of their humanity and ignore the rich diversity of Arab experiences. By painting the region as a monolithic entity, the unique culture and history of the countries that make up the MENA, and the sub-regions within it, are dismissed. 

In addition to ignoring cultural specificity, Arab characters in mainstream media are almost exclusively Muslim, contributing to the false assumption that to be Arab is to be Muslim. The experiences and histories of the region’s many religions, including Judaism and Christianity, deserve to be acknowledged, shared, and celebrated. 

History of silencing  

Media produced in the West has a long history of silencing or “othering” Arab characters and culture. The Palestinian-American postcolonial scholar Edward Said developed the theory of “Orientalism,” used to describe the process of “othering” the Orient (Asia and the MENA region), in his 1978 book by the same name. According to this theory, 19th century Western literature and art reduced Arabs to uncivilized and idle “others” imbued with a sort of mysticism. 

The lure of the “exotic” led many who had never visited the region to create inaccurately imagined representations of “The East.” The lack of genuine interaction or exchange further contributed to constructions of the Orient as a passive subject of Western construction. It is this lack of dynamic exchange and passiveness that this sits at the heart of today’s simplistic misrepresentations of Arabs in mainstream media. 

In 2015, artists hired to make scenes on the program “Homeland” “more authentic,” via the addition of Arabic graffiti, deviated from script to include the phrase “Homeland is racist.” That the producers did not notice the change, which only came to light when the show aired, further highlights the problems of the continued portrayal of the MENA region by those who do not understand the cultures and languages of the Middle East.

This flattening of Arab culture and specificity is similarly present in the 2019 Netflix series “The Spy” when the supposedly Syrian shopkeepers speak in Moroccan Darija (the country’s Arabic dialect) and not the Levantine dialect spoken in Syria. The program was filmed in Morocco. 

The work of Habibi Collective and its partnership with Sharjah Art Foundation to bring Arab voices, particularly those of women, to a broader audience is an important step in reversing the trend of speaking of, instead of hearing from, Arab characters and creators.

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