This year has proved to be a significant one for Arab film in London, with the Iraqi Documentary Film Festival in May, the Palestine Film Festival in April, and the Arab Cinema Weekend hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in March, with filmmakers taking part in Q&A sessions. Sharq attended all three events, and highlights the award-winners, UK premiers, and other noteworthy films.

 

 

 

 

  

 

Acclaimed Lebanese Director Jocelyne Saab tackles a young Egyptian's struggle to overcome the pressures of being a modern woman with typical sensitivity and visual lyricism. Dunia, played by rising star Hanan Turk, yearns to follow in the footsteps of her mother and become a famous dancer. A childhood secret, however, continues to bore away at her, preventing her from expressing passion for her art and the man she loves. As the plot hurtles towards a shocking end, Saab offers viewers a complex and richly rewarding portrait of contemporary Cairo, hovering skilfully between the power of dreams and nightmares.

 

 

 

Playing like an Egyptian Cinema Paradiso, Director Oussama Faouzi's I Love Cinema is one of the best and most entertaining films from the 'Hollywood on the Nile' for many years. A simple tale of a young boy's love for movies set against his strict, religious father (an Egyptian Coptic Christian), the film plays hard and fast with the sacred issues of sex, politics and religion. By choosing to focus on the wonderment that persists when the lights go down, the curtains part and that celestial beam from the projector is allowed to simply entertain its audiences, Faouzi reminds everyone of why Egyptian cinema used to be hailed as one of the world's best.

 

 

 

 

A deceptively simple tale of an elderly man forced to travel from his house in southern Iraq along the Tigris to Baghdad to buy his ailing wife medicine, Director Amer Alwan films the man's lingering journey across the vast river with panoramic beauty. Taking place on the eve of the US-led invasion, ominously present with the distant sound of planes and news reports, Alwan - who returned to Iraq in 2003 following years in France - keeps politics in the background, preferring to film the natural beauty of his native country with the elegiac nostalgia of the exile returned. The film's photography is at times reminiscent of the best of Terrence Malick's work.

 

 

 

Syrian Director Mohammad Malas tackles the insidious rise of Islamic fundamentalism with great deft in Passion.

The film follows Imane, an ordinary housewife happily married, raising her two kids and the daughter of a brother imprisoned for pro-democracy activism. Malas pulls no punches in a powerful depiction of the repression suffered by women in Syrian society. Beautifully lensed, the film offers a rare and vivid portrayal of Damascus, a city whose mysteries have all too often remained just that for Western audiences.

 

 

 

Awarded the Fipresci Prize at the Locarno Film Festival, the second feature from artists and filmmaking team Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas marks an important step in the renaissance of post-civil war Lebanese cinema. The film follows Claudia (Julia Kassar), and her son Malek (Ziad Saad) on the day she finally signs the paperwork to formally declare her husband dead, 15 years after he disappeared during the war.

As Claudia grapples with her guilt and torment over the empty space in her bed, the borderline narcoleptic Malek sleepwalks his way through a renovated Beirut in search of his beautiful girlfriend, yet another listless member of a generation dislocated from reality and numbed by trauma. With a soundtrack provided by the likes of ultra-trendy Lebanese group Soap Kills, A Perfect Day evocatively captures a nation finding itself at a crossroads between war and peace, pain and resolution. Joreige and Hadjithomas embroider the film with their trademark mesmerising visuals, succeeding in creating a work that lingers long in the memory. Never before has a mobile phone ring-tone been so life-affirming!

 

 

A box-office hit in its native Egypt, A State of Love is directed by Saad Hendawi and stars Hend Sabri, one of the most exciting Arab actresses to emerge in recent years and arguably the best-equipped to repeat the crossover success of Omar Sharif. Hendawi's film is a post-9/11 love story looking at Arabs in the West, and is a successful depiction of the dilemmas and challenges facing a generation all too often lost in translation amidst all the talk of dialogue between two civilisations.

 

 

 

A few weeks before his college entrance exams, Reda, a young man living in the south of France, finds himself forced to drive his father to Mecca. From the start, the journey is difficult. Reda and his father have nothing in common. Conversation is reduced to the strict minimum. Reda wants to experience the trip in his own way, but his father demands respect and expects his son to understand the meaning of his pilgrimage. As they drive through different countries and meet various people, Reda and his father observe each other warily. How can they create a relationship when communication is impossible? From the south of France through Italy, Serbia, Turkey, Syria, Jordan to Saudi Arabia, their journey is 3,000 miles long.

 

 

With a star-studded cast including Sir John Gielgud, Anthony Quinn and Rod Steiger, the film tells the story of Omar Mukhtar, the Libyan resistance leader who successfully fought against the Italian army during World War II. Syrian Director Mustapha Akkad, who was tragically killed in last year's suicide bombings in Amman, produced all of the Halloween films, and was for many years the most prominent face of Arab film-making in Hollywood.