Tewfik
Hakem (bio), France
Culture, 27/12/2021
Translated
by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala
From Tel Aviv to Jeddah, via Cairo and Amman, cinema news in this region of the world is full of surprises and reversals. Here we take stock of the situation and attempt to decipher it.
In December 2021, the first edition of the Red Sea Film Festival was held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, less than four years after the lifting of the ban on cinemas in the country - Credits: PATRICK BAZ / RED SEA FILM FESTIVAL / AFP Photos - AFP
Did you know that Jeddah is about to become the Mecca of the Arab film industry... when just three years ago cinema was still banned in Saudi Arabia? Did you notice that the #Metoo wave that has swept across the world takes on a whole new meaning when it washes up on the lands of the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict”? Can you name the equivalent of Marion Cotillard or Jean Dujardin in Cairo, Tel Aviv or Beirut? If you answered no to all these questions, welcome, marhababikum! You are the privileged addressee of this letter from the Orient, focused on cinema.
Palestinian drama wins award in Israel
Our tour begins in Israel, where autumn is the season of the Film Academy Awards. This year, Eran Kolirin's latest feature film, Let It Be Morning, has won almost all the trophies. Adapted from Sayed Kashua's novel of the same name (translated from Hebrew by Grove Atlantic in 2006), the film stars Sami, an accountant living in Jerusalem who returns to the Palestinian village where he grew up to attend his brother's wedding. The stay, which was supposed to last 48 hours, will unfortunately be prolonged for Sami: on the evening of his arrival, a patrol of Israeli soldiers surrounds the village and forbids the inhabitants to move around. Based on this absurd situation, the director creates a tragicomedy in total empathy with the Palestinian protagonists. "The Arabs of Israel are the invisible ones in our country", Eran Kolirin told Le Monde in July 2021 when his film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard selection. "They live in a democracy, but they don't have the same rights as others, they are stuck in an untenable position and feel guilty about it vis-à-vis the Palestinians in the West Bank," said the Israeli director, who made a name for himself in France in 2007 with The Band's Visit.
Sami (Alex Bakri, on the right in the photo) goes to his old village for his brother's wedding. On the evening of his arrival, Israeli soldiers surround the village, forbidding any movement - Credits: © DORI MEDIA / LES FILMS DU POISSON
This is not the first time that the Israeli Film Academy has awarded a film critical of the IDF. Waltz with Bashir, Ari Folman's animated film about the Israeli army's complicity in the 1982 massacres by Lebanese Phalangists in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila, won Israel the Oscar for best foreign film in 2009 (after winning the equivalent César in France). The films Bethlehem by Yuval Adler in 2014, and Foxtroot by Samuel Maoz in 2017, which were highly criticised by the Israeli authorities at the time, were also rewarded by the Ophir Awards (the Israeli Césars).
But with Eran Kolirin's latest opus, a new level has been reached: it is definitely a contemporary Palestinian drama, with a mostly Palestinian cast, and adapted from a novel by a Palestinian author that could represent Israel at the Oscars this year. This has caused a stir among both Israelis and Palestinians. While some denounce “propaganda” to tarnish the image of the Israeli army, others condemn a “cultural and political appropriation”" of Palestinian suffering.
