The 15th annual Arab Film festival(AFF) is scheduled to take place between 13 October and 23 October this year. AFF will be held in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area in the US and its mission is to enhance public understanding of Arab culture, and to provide alternative representations of Arabs that contradict […]
The 15th annual Arab Film festival(AFF) is scheduled to take place between 13 October and 23 October this year.
AFF will be held in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area in the US and its mission is to enhance public understanding of Arab culture, and to provide alternative representations of Arabs that contradict the stereotypical images frequently encountered in the American mass media. The festival screens films from and about the Arab World that provide realistic perspectives on Arab people, culture, art, history and politics.
Speaking about the entries received, Michel Shehadeh, AFFs executive director had earlier told BroadcastPro Middle East: The films poured in from all over the Arab world and Arab immigrant communities. The range and level of sophistication that these films engendered is so heartening. You could feel that there is a filmmaking renaissance in Arab filmmaking.
This years line up includes Habibti by UK-based filmmaker Nour Wazzi and it is a story about Iman, an Arab woman steeped in tradition who journeys to London to visit her estranged daughter Amira to find her living with her artist boyfriend. The film explores the clashes between mother and daughter and the development of an unlikely bond between them.
Another film that will be screened is Majid by Moroccan filmmaker Nassim Abassi. It is a coming of age story of a ten-year-old Moroccan orphan named Majid. Following recurrent nightmares, he discovers that he can’t remember his parents’ faces anymore and that there are no photographs of them apart from the charred remains of a family photo with his parents heads burnt away. With the help of his new young friend Larbi, Majid decides to go on a quest to find a photograph of his dead parents. The film follows their journey to Casablanca where danger and adventure await them.
Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim El Batouts Hawi is also a part of the festival. Inspired by the alternative cinema of Goddard, Vertov and Kiarostami, the story follows the journey of Youssef, a prisoner released after five years of solitary confinement in order to fetch a sheath of important documents, The film develops into an organic study of Alexandria, a closer view of so-called reality and the lives of everyday people.
