{"id":260221,"date":"2019-10-18T16:05:23","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T19:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/?p=260221"},"modified":"2024-05-17T16:45:06","modified_gmt":"2024-05-17T19:45:06","slug":"director-finds-arab-latin-american-cinema-alike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/director-finds-arab-latin-american-cinema-alike\/","title":{"rendered":"Director finds Arab, Latin American cinema alike"},"content":{"rendered":"

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 \u201cI see similarities between Arab and Latin American cinema productions: both convey social criticism and a search for freedom,\u201d said Tunisian director Lofti Achour (pictured<\/em>), who is in S\u00e3o Paulo to promote and participate in a debate about his first feature film Burning Hope<\/a> (85 min, 2017), which is being screened at the Arab World Film Festival<\/a> through October 28 at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil.<\/p>\n

Achour wrote and directed the movie and talked to ANBA about that, the short film Law of Lamb<\/a> (15 min, 2016), which will also be screened at the show, and his future project, a documentary about Tunisian police brutality during the country\u2019s dictatorship.<\/p>\n

The movie \u201cBurning Hope\u201d is set during the Jasmine Revolution in 2011 and leaps to three years later. \u201cIt\u2019s about the encounter of three young people, a boy and two girls during a popular demonstration,\u201d said Achour. A policeman tries to rape the boy and the two young women step in and beat the man, believing they have killed him. But three years later, they discover that the policeman is still alive and meet him again. \u201cI grew up with the police brutality in my country and that has pervaded my last works. \u2018Law of Lamb\u2019 is also about that – abuse of authority, corruption – but with humor, sarcasm. It\u2019s a comedy about corruption in Tunisia, where the grandpa is fooled and the policemen enjoy fooling him,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Achour said that the short movie competed in Cannes Festival and was screened in seminars to debate corruption in the country. \u201cThere is no censorship anymore in our country and I work on creating the best works possible. I\u2019m concerned about art, aesthetics, but a meaningful one. My interest was never to be commercial,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The filmmaker traveled through Tunisia to screen his feature film in places where there\u2019s no movie theaters. \u201c\u2018Burning Hope\u2019 had fifty free screenings. We traveled around the country with a truck, a screen and a projector and reached an audience of ten thousand people,\u201d he stressed. Achour said that Tunisia has just twenty cinema rooms, almost all of them in Tunis, and for a country with 12 million residents this a very small number.<\/p>\n

About the documentary that he\u2019s producing. Achour said he recorded testimonies by 63 people that talked to the Court of Transitional Justice \u2013 which judges torture and corruption crimes that took place during the dictatorial regimen. \u201cI recorded the testimonies but not the judges, for their safety, and it\u2019s hard since 95% of the defendants don\u2019t go to the courtrooms. The government doesn\u2019t want to know what happened, since many people now in the government were implicated too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Achour believes that the elected president<\/a>, Law professor Kais Sa\u00efd, was the better option compared to his opponent, mogul Nabil Karoui. \u201cDespite being old and conservative, he was the better option. He campaigned against the dictatorship. The young people voted for him. Many graduated young people are jobless, around 50% of the economy is informal in the country \u2013 we live hard times, but we are hopeful. The old system is dying; it\u2019ll take long, but it\u2019s going to get better,\u201d he believes.<\/p>\n

This is the second time the filmmaker comes to Brazil. \u201cI\u2019m also a theater director and staged an adaptation of Macbeth (Macbeth \u2013 Leila and Ben: a Bloody History)<\/em> for the World Shakespeare Festival in London, which occurred during the Olympics\u2019 year, in 2012, and the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP) hosted a large drama festival (Bienal Internacional de Teatro da USP<\/a>) and invited us to stage the play here in 2013,\u201d he told.<\/p>\n

The director believes that cinema brings people together and bridges gaps. \u201cCinema really brings us together \u2013 this is no demagogy. It\u2019s a window that allow us to discover things we don\u2019t know about far-off places, and human issues are identified with despite the geography, in very different countries,\u201d he said, mentioning the time that his movie \u201cP\u00e8re<\/a>\u201d (15 min, 2014) was screened in Japan. \u201cWe had a debate afterwards and some Japanese women that suffered prejudice for having had children outside marriage said they had seen themselves in the movie. They are very traditional there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The debate with the director takes place on Saturday (19) at 5:30 pm after his two movies are screened. Check out the full program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Translated by Guilherme Miranda<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bruna Garcia\/ANBA<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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