São Paulo – The 10th Arab World Film Festival starts on August 12th in the city of São Paulo. This year, the event will have its largest edition, with more than 30 movies in around 100 screenings, and will also be held in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Vitória, in different dates. The festival is organized by the Institute for Arab Culture in a partnership with other organizations, among them the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce.
“We will have movies from Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Palestine, Portugal and Brazil. Almost all of the movies are unreleased [in the country]”, says Geraldo de Campos, the festival’s director and curator. “The Arab world has a diversified artistic production, it’s not homogeneous. We want to strengthen the idea of the Arab world as a space of meetings”, explain Campos about the concept of uniting other arts to the film festival.
In São Paulo, the screenings happen until September 12th in eight different places: Cine Sesc, Banco do Brasil Cultural Center, Library Mário de Andrade, Matilha Cultural, Fábrica de Cultura, São Paulo Cultural Center, Immigration Museum and Olido Gallery.
Among the highlights of the festival is the production Sotto Voce, by the Moroccan director Kamal Kamal. The movie, set in the period of the Algerian War, portrays the challenges faced by a group of refugees that tries to escape the conflict going through dangerous areas around the frontier between Algeria and Morocco.
Theeb, by director Abu Nowar, is set in the desert of Hijaz (current Saudi Arabia), in an Ottoman province, during the First World War. The movie tells the story of a Bedouin kid that experiences a hastened coming of age when guiding a British officer through the desert.
The festival also displays the relations between Brazil and the Arab world. From Egypt, for instance, comes the production Paraíso dos Anjos Caídos (Paradise of Fallen Angels, in a direct translation), an adaptation done in the North Africa country of the book A morte e a morte de Quincas Berro D´Água (The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell), by the Bahia state writer Jorge Amado.
The Portuguese movie A estrada para a revolução (The road to revolution) and the Brazilian A revolução do ano (The revolution of the year) are about the trips of young directors in their search for stories of the Arab Spring.
Among the several events scheduled along the film screenings are the opening party of the festival on August 15th, at Rio Verde Cultural Center in the city of São Paulo, with the presentation of three bands and a photo exhibition. Also scheduled is the finale party on September 12th, in the music venue Jongo Reverendo, also in the city of São Paulo.
There will be also discussion panels with Brazilian and foreigner guests, including Alaa Karkouti, Syrian journalist and movie critic, responsible for the Arab cinema sessions at the festivals of Cannes (France) and Berlin (Germany); Nira Shirazipour, producer of Mars Sunrise, movie that tells the story of a Palestinian artist that is jailed and tortured; Marcia Dib, dance teacher and a master’s degree holder on Arab culture; Brahim Mazned, one of the main director of music festivals in the Arab world; the writer from Amazonas state Milton Hatoum; Silvia Antibas, culture director of the Arab Chamber; Miguel Chaia, social scientist and professor at PUC-SP, among others. The panels will cover topics such as poetry, music, literature, politics and artistic production.
“The festival is completing ten years and has established itself as one of the most prominent in the country. It allows for an account of the political events of the Arab world. Those who have followed the festival in these ten years were able to grasp the changes that occurred over there”, points out Campos. Last year alone, the festival received five thousand people in 68 screenings.
In Rio de Janeiro, the event takes place from August 19th to 24th, in Vitória, from August 25th to 30th, and in Belo Horizonte, from August 20th to 30th. The opening screening of the festival is scheduled for August 12th at Cine Sesc, in the city of São Paulo, at 7 PM. The full schedule is to be defined still and will be made available soon at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mostra-Mundo-%C3%81rabe-de-Cinema/329005973932264?fref=ts.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
