São Paulo – The 36th São Paulo International Film Festival includes thirteen Arab films, out of a total of 350 works from more than 60 different countries. The event will take place from October 19th to November 2nd at 28 venues in São Paulo, including movie theatres, museums, and cultural institutions.
The films were made in 2011 and 2012 in countries such as Algeria, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Morocco and Syria. The topics range from family dramas to the social conflicts of the Arab Spring.
A highlight is The Last Stop, by the Rio de Janeiro-based filmmaker Márcio Curi. The film is a joint Brazil-Lebanon production and tells the story of the Lebanese teenager Tarik, who comes to Brazil in 1950, in a ship in which he befriends other Arab kids. In 2001, after having lost his wife, he travels around the country, alongside his daughter Samia, looking for the friends he had made over 50 years earlier.
The documentary A Flood in Baath Country, by the Syrian filmmaker Omar Amiralay, shows the collapse of infrastructure works in the area around the village of Al-Machi, resulting from the Syria’s 30-plus years being governed by the Baath party. In the fiction film When I Saw You, a young Palestinian man named Terek and his mother Ghaydaa cross the border with Jordan to live in a refugee camp. Tarek has a hard time getting used to living in the countryside and hopes to meet his father again, as he seeks a way out of that situation.
The other Arab films in the festival are El Gusto (Algeria), Sea Shadow (United Arab Emirates), 111 Girls (Iraq), The Last Friday (Jordan), The Miscreants (Morocco), I Am Eleven (Morocco), Water (Palestine), Inheritance (Palestine), I Am The One Who Brings Flowers To Her Grave (Syria) and The Sun’s Incubator (Syria). Some were produced jointly with non-Arab countries in the Middle East and Europe.
The festival also features a selection of classic movies in restored copies, including Lawrence of Arabia, produced in the United Kingdom in 1962, which tells the story of T.E. Lawrence, a lieutenant in the English army in North Africa, who takes on a mission during World War I as an observer in the territory which is now Saudi Arabia, and ends up collaborating with the unification of Arab tribes against the Turks. The film won seven Oscars.
Service
36th São Paulo International Film Festival
October 19th to November 2nd
The full program is available at www.mostra.org
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
