Back home in India, especially in the cities, cultural activities, street theatre and country-specific week-long film screenings are pretty common practice, widening our outlook on the world and enabling us to see life beyond our relatively cloistered upbringing in the UAE. It’s one aspect of my youth that I sorely missed when I returned to […]
Back home in India, especially in the cities, cultural activities, street theatre and country-specific week-long film screenings are pretty common practice, widening our outlook on the world and enabling us to see life beyond our relatively cloistered upbringing in the UAE. It’s one aspect of my youth that I sorely missed when I returned to my home in Dubai.
Fortunately, the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) fed that need for a few years before it shut down and now, more recently, we have independent cinema house Cinema Akil and the likes of Mubi.com bringing some fantastic films to the public. And it’s at Cinema Akil that I had the opportunity to see Europa by award-winning Iraqi-Italian director Haider Rashid.
Europa is a tough watch, and the camera remains unrelentingly pinned on the face of this young Iraqi trying, along with several other migrants, to cross over to Europe illegally. A brief prologue to the film gives us a glimpse of the brutality of that journey and the violence and cruelty that await migrants at every step, but slowly the camera moves to the protagonist, and from then on we are just with him on this very intimate journey of survival. The director doesn’t try to soften the blows or gloss over any part of that journey, and although there is very little dialogue in the film, you find you can’t take your eyes off the screen. Haider pulls off a fantastic feat with this film, which is at once a thriller and an emotionally gripping work that can easily stand its ground at the box office. You have to hear the story in his words.
In the meantime, there’s also been plenty of action at the BroadcastPro office as we concluded two in-person roundtables, a virtual tech summit and some panel discussions, as well as visiting new studios, interviewing new people and so on. All that action always finds its way into our pages, which are replete with information on different aspects of the MENA region’s Media & Entertainment business. From media convergence and anti-piracy to a new sound recording studio, virtual production and IBC’s plans for this September, we have plenty of good reads for the summer. Happy reading!
