Filmmakers From the Arab World Adapt to Get Projects Off the Ground in Times of Conflict: ‘You Can’t Just Stop Telling Stories’
As conflicts escalate in the Middle East and North Africa, from Palestine to Yemen and Sudan, filmmakers have seen an increase in solidarity within the local creative community to find ways to continue to get films made in the region. Still, producers and directors struggle to navigate an increasingly tense and politicized international scene and express concerns about the future of an industry that has experienced unforeseen growth within the last five years.
“We are in the middle of a very scary situation right now and we don’t know when it will end,” said film producer Alaa Karkouti, CEO and co-founder of MAD Solutions, the Arab world’s most prolific distributor of Arabic film content. “There is the issue of local productions but any non-Arab productions will also look at the political situation before coming to the region. This is the most pressing issue in the world right now.”
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Karkouti, who distributed Mohamed Kordofani’s “Goodbye, Julia,” mentioned how the drama — which became the first-ever Sudanese film to play as part of the Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 — opened the doors for Sudanese filmmakers, who then saw those doors firmly shut following the country’s civil war. “There were a lot of hot projects coming out of Sudan, and now it’s impossible to shoot in the country.”
“I have said this many times and I believe in it: we are in the Golden Age of Arab film. But it’s about stability,” Kakouti added. “Talent, budget and passion are all important, of course, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t have stability.”
One of the most prominent producers in the region and the CEO of Film Clinic, Mohamed Hefzy told Variety he is currently working on a Sudanese project that had to be shot in Egypt because of the war. “This is just one of many examples I’m involved in where people come together to try to find solutions to help films reach completion. Filmmakers always find creative ways. Necessity is the mother of invention as they say, so it really is about necessity — you can’t just stop telling stories, so we find ways and adapt.”
Hefzy has also recently faced challenges while working on Cherien Dabis’s “All That’s Left of You,” which will have its market premiere as part of the Marrakech Film Festival’s prestigious Atlas Workshops. “We suddenly had to shift plans after October 7. We had to shoot somewhere else and it made it much more challenging because not only was the budget much higher but we had to shift pretty quickly to find additional money. It’s been a real uphill battle.”
Laila Abbas, whose sophomore feature “Thanks for Banking With Us!” just had its Arab regional premiere at the El Gouna Film Festival, is also open about her current struggles as a Palestinian filmmaker whose future in the industry becomes less and less clear by the day.
“We have to be realistic. I had two stories for my next films and am now having to think about them differently,” she told Variety. “I need to be honest with myself; things have changed in terms of who I can collaborate with. ‘Thank You for Banking With Us!’ is a co-production between Palestine and Germany and I don’t know if I can do that anymore. People are very scared of anything Palestinian right now. It’s a whole new world for us.”
Abbas also opened up about traveling to festivals with her film during such a difficult time in her home country. “The smallest decisions become very hard. How do I present myself? How can I even think about getting my hair and make-up done for festivals? It feels wrong. I feel like I should wear black. I’m trying to make it work, but it’s so testing.”
With the heavy politicization of the conflicts in the region, directors and producers fear no longer being able to co-produce with Europe, still the most common practice in the Middle East and North African world. With this in mind, some industry heads have turned their eyes toward the possibility of local co-productions, with neighboring countries joining forces to tap into the growing funds in the region while sharing expertise.
“Independent filmmaking in the region has long depended on European co-productions but with the political stances we are seeing, the question is: will films be censored?,” posed producer Rula Nasser, the founder of Jordan’s The Imaginarium Films. “I don’t think people want to talk about the conflict. Ideologies are becoming more and more profound but what we do is not just about the telling of stories. It’s also about documenting what is happening because it is something that will live on forever.”
As questions linger regarding the future of filmmaking in the MENA region, another great concern involves what will happen to the films that do manage to get produced. The general feeling in Gouna amongst some top industry heads is that major festivals are wary of programming openly political films about ongoing conflicts, while distributors are also growing more and more fearsome.
“Festivals are sometimes the only lifeline for these films,” pondered Hefzy while highlighting the importance of platforms like El Gouna, Marrakech and Cairo. “It’s very hard to get distribution. Distributors are less willing to take risks today, which is unfortunate, but festivals can give films a life.”
Nasser is concerned but remains hopeful: “Resistance creates means. Maybe there will be platforms launched especially for these films because people will look for them. If there is an issue around the world that you don’t know much about, you start looking for information that goes beyond scrolling on social media. Where there is hunger for knowledge, there is a way.”
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