NEW DELHI, 31 July 2007 — The Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema ended here on Sunday at the prestigious Siri Fort. Twenty films from eight Arab countries showcased a wide range of human emotions seeped into history, war and modern life complexities.
Saudi Arabian entry “Shadows of Silence” is a straightforward but terrifying story of the control of an occult over society seen through the eyes of intellectuals.
Algeria stole the thunder by presenting six intense films including Gillos Ponetecorvo’s unsettling masterpiece “The Battle of Algiers” and Rachid Bouchareb’s war epic “Days of Glory,” a powerful post-colonial narrative of the little known story of North-African troops which fought in General de Gualles’ army alongside American and British allies to liberate France during World War II. The film won the Best Actor award for the Ensemble of Actors at Cannes in 2006.
Three Arab films were shown in competition. “Falafel,” a joint Lebanese-French production, by Lebanese director Michel Kammoun is a frightening quest through the nocturnal life of Beirut exploring the post-civil war emptiness surrounding its protagonist, Toufic, who finds even having a normal life is a luxury beyond his reach.
The other two films in competition were “Making Of” and “Tender is the Wolf” both from Tunisia. “Making Of” by Nouri Bouzid is a film within a film. The internal film is about Batha, a break-dancer who falls prey to Islamic militants after 9/11 and is brainwashed and prepared for a suicide-bombing mission. “Tender is the Wolf” by Jilani Saadi is set against the cold world of poverty and violence and tackles questions about the nature of human relationship in today’s Muslim society.
“Crossing the Dust” that entered the festival as an Iraq-Kurdistan film was set against the 2003 US invasion. It is an emotional drama of a young boy named Saddam who gets lost and is reunited with his family by two Kurdish soldiers.
A total of 140 films were screened at the festival. Organizer Neville Tuli said, “Arab films have proved to be inventive, imaginative, and bold; some are personal statements, others social comments, questioning and chronicling tradition, everyday life, war, gender, fundamentalism and much else.
These creative expressions on celluloid prove beyond doubt that cinema in the Arab world is fast acquiring an identity of its own.”