Once a year, the SAFAR Film Festival brings to the UK the best of cinema from the Arab world courtesy of The Arab British Centre. This year, the theme is “On Dreams, Hopes & Realities”, which feels particularly momentous considering what is happening in the Region.
Movie still from Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous (2022). Courtesy of SAFAR Film Festival
Five years ago, if you’d asked me whether I believed that cinema could bring about peace in the Middle East, I would have enthusiastically answered, “yes!”. Today, I’m not so sure. Years of bridge building by fantastic, insightful filmmakers from the SWANA region have brought about little change. Actually, the Region as a whole has never been in so much turmoil.
But perhaps Arab cinema - a broad term I don’t personally love but use for lack of a better all-encompassing definition - can now help us to understand what is going on throughout Palestine, Israel, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon and beyond. So, this year I looked at SAFAR as a cinematic roadmap, to help me understand that which the media often fails to describe: the human toll of conflicts, borders and forced migration.
The SAFAR Film Festival is the largest in the UK dedicated to Arab cinema. Now in its ninth edition, it runs from 18 - 30 June with screenings in London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Oxford and Plymouth. What started out as a London-only biennial event taking has now turned into an annual UK-wide festival bringing together audiences from the diaspora and beyond who are interested in Arab cinema. As in the past few editions, the programme this year was curated by Rabih El-Khoury, a Beirut-born programmer now based in Berlin.
Here are five titles from this year’s edition that should be on everyone’s radar:
BYE BYE TIBERIAS by Lina Soualem
Hailing from Arab cinema royalty, Paris-born Lina Soualem is the daughter of Palestinian superstar Hiam Abbass and French-Algerian actor Zinedine Soualem. While her 2020 debut feature documentary Their Algeria highlighted Soulalem’s Algerian grandparents as they sought a divorce after 62 years of marriage, in Bye Bye Tiberias the filmmaker goes back to her maternal Palestinian roots. The documentary, which world premiered at the Venice Film Festival last September, analyses actress Hiam Abbass’ bold life choices, which were mostly dictated by her nationality. As Lina and her mother examine together the actress’ chosen exile and revisit those who were left behind - the surviving women in her family - a must-watch, poignant film about unbreakable bonds and the power of one’s heritage emerges. Bye Bye Tiberias will be released in UK cinemas from June 28th.
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL by Mohamed Jabaly
Opening the festival with a Palestinian film seemed a given, according to programmer El-Khoury. But featuring 2023 documentary Life is Beautiful by Mohamed Jabaly was a bold and pleasant surprise for those attending the screening at the Institut Français in South Kensington. Jabaly skillfully documents his forced emigration in 2014 when the Rafah border to his home country of Gaza was closed while the filmmaker travelled to a festival in Norway. Shut out, without any way to return, Jabaly applied for work visas in Norway, some of which were at first accepted, then later denied because the filmmaker lacked formal education in the art of cinema. However, the young director’s resilience and sense of humour, along with an impressive network of people who helped him cut through the bureaucracy, make the film a must-watch, especially if you find yourself losing hope in humanity. And if you’re a cat lover, the cameo by a feline named Hilarious lives up to the pet’s name.
DIRTY DIFFICULT DANGEROUS by Wissam Charaf
Displacement and the choices people make to survive after migrating to another country are at the centre of Lebanese-French filmmaker Wissam Charaf’s narrative feature Dirty Difficult Dangerous. The film world premiered in Venice in 2022 and features a love story between two unlikely lovers, told in tones of magical realism. Ahmed, a Syrian refugee selling scrap metal on the streets of Beirut, is played by Ziad Jallad, an actor slated to become this generation’s Omar Sharif. He falls in love with Mehdia, played by Clara Couturet, an Ethiopian domestic worker who dreams of escaping her demanding employees. Will these two broken human beings find within each other a way to survive and better yet, thrive? You’ll have to watch this visually beautiful film for yourself to find out.
THE BURDENED by Amr Gamal
On the subject of two people collaborating, this film from Yemen is about a married couple’s joint decision to seek an abortion when wife Isra’a falls pregnant for a second time. As the family is forced to move into cheaper dwellings and the financial crisis in Yemen’s southern city, Aden, grows, the couple can’t imagine bringing another mouth to feed into their world. What follows is an examination of modern Yemeni society, told with care and insight by Gamal, as the forces of civic laws, religious codes and personal ethics come into play to create a strong, touching film that is framed by the stunning city at the centre of its story.
GOODBYE JULIA by Mohamed Kordofani
Personal ethics are also at the heart of Sudanese film Goodbye Julia. It was the first feature from the country to premiere in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, and following that, Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong’o came on board as Executive Producer to support the film’s awards bid. Set in Khartoum just before the secession of South Sudan, the film tells the story of two women who come together because of a tragedy that is caused by one and affects the other. Visually stunning and perfectly acted by its two leading ladies, Eiman Yousif as Mona and Siran Riak as Julia, Goodbye Julia will make you wonder a) why there aren’t more films from Sudan, and b) when we’ll be able to watch this filmmaker’s next offering!
For more information about SAFAR and to watch the films this weekend, check out their website.
By E. Nina Rothe. Check out all of her amazing platforms! https://www.eninarothe.com/
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