In The Last Days of the City (2016)

Dir. Tamer El-Said

Souad (2020) dir. Aytem Amin

Achoura

There are echoes of THE BABADOOK and Stephen King’s IT in Talal Selhami’s Moroccan-French ACHOURA (2018, Shudder, Tubi, Prime), but they tend to amplify its power rather than diminish it. The main referent is the King novel, and Selhami’s film creates a deeper, more resonant image of the loss of innocence. Three childhood friends deal with adult trauma because of an incident in which one’s brother was abducted. When the brother returns, they piece together what happened and realize they have to fight a child-eating djinn whose memory had only survived in Stephane’s (Ivan Gonzalez) nightmares and his work as an artist. For the others, the effect is more emotional. Ali (Younes Bouab) is a chain-smoking police detective obsessed with a series of child abductions. That’s led to the break-up of his marriage to Nadia (Sofia Manousha) and alienation from his adoring son. Their story unfolds in flashes, and Selhami trusts his audience to piece them together. From the prologue, he sets the film’s style, a visual poetry composed of tracking shots and rich, dark colors to create a mordant fairy tale. He also depicts the loss of innocence early on as a young boy tries to help a child bride escape from the adult she’s been forced to marry. Then the story jumps to the present, with the viewer charged with seeing how the earlier action relates to the main plot. There are also fragmentary flashbacks that gradually reveal what traumatized the four children. This isn’t a feel-good horror film, but it earns its grimness by creating an almost palpable sense of the emotional connection among the four friends.

Arab Film Media has extended its Palestinian Voices program for the month of December! Continue to engage with Palestinian stories and fight for Palestinian freedom.

All films are free, currently all are available worldwide

arabfilminstitute.org/palestinian-voices/

❤️🇵🇸

Cairo Station (1958) dir. Youssef Chahine

Princess Zeila, voiced in English by a young Julie Andrews., from "The Singing Princess" (1949)

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

dir. David Lean

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Reading about the 1998 film titled The Siege starring Denzel Washington and Tony Shalhoub because it's the only work I know Shalhoub was in where he plays a character who shares his ethnicity (Lebanese-American). The dismissive comments the White director and the White screenwriter made towards the Arab American and Muslim communities criticizing the film want to make me punch drywall tho.

It's easy to make such comments when White people can do bad things and not have those bad apples be seen as representative of all White people, to not be the target of bigoted laws and hate crimes as a result of said bad people.

Over their Dead bodies

(TANTURA #PALESTINE)

على أجسادهم فيلم ل عرب لطفي

Over their Dead Bodies , Arab Loutfi,s film about the forgotten massacre of the village Altantoura in occupied Palestine 1948

SOURCE: Arab Lotfi

I have finally watched The Creator yesterday. Watching that while the genocide in Palestine is currently unfolding was very, very painful.

Reviews on letterboxd I've seen focused so much on the what they perceived to be "boring sci-fi trope of wow robots have feelings/souls too" and neglected to point out how this film shows how US military DEHUMANIZE people.

It really grinds my gears how many people missed the totally not-subtle anti-military, anti-imperialism aspect at the very heart of the film.

morroco in the 00’s

المغرب في 2000

Souad (2020) dir. Aytem Amin

The Perfect Candidate (Haifaa Al-Mansour, 2019)

ANDREW GARFIELD

at the "In Conversation With Andrew Garfield" during the Red Sea International Film Festival 2023.

“Inshallah”

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PARK CITY, UTAH - JANUARY 21: Jerry Habibi attends 2023 Sundance Film Festival "The Persian Version" Premiere at Library Center Theatre on January 21, 2023 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)