This year’s selection
for the Cannes Film Festival includes possibly the largest number of Arab,
African, and Asian films in the storied event’s history. This is not just mere
tokenism: The festival’s Artistic Director Thierry Fremaux and his fellow
programmers have clearly cast their eye to new territories as they fight the
notion that cinema is in crisis.
اضافة اعلان
At the press conference announcing
the official selection, Fremaux told the watching audience, “global cinema
is reinventing itself… there are many films from countries that are not
habituated to coming to Cannes, such as Mongolia. There is a strong presence
from Africa, North Africa, East and West Africa, and in this new generation of
filmmakers, many are female.”
A tectonic shiftAs if to prove the
point, the only two filmmakers appearing in the competition line-up for the
first time are two women from the African continent. It feels like a seminal
moment for world cinema.
“Global cinema is reinventing itself… There is a strong presence from Africa, North Africa, East and West Africa, and in this new generation of filmmakers, many are female.”
The better-known of the
two female filmmakers making their competition debut is Tunisian director
Kaouther Ben Hania. Her shocking drama “Beauty and the Dogs” played in the
Cannes “Un Certain Regard” section in 2017, and her last effort, the art
thriller “The Man Who Sold His Skin”, played in competition at the Venice Film
Festival in 2020.
Her new film, “Four Daughters”, will be the only Arab film in competition.
It documents the real-life story of Olfa, a mother coping with the
disappearance of her two eldest daughters. In their absence, the director mixes
documentary and fiction to create a unique cinema experience to recount the
story of these women, casting Egyptian-Tunisian legend Hend Sabri in the lead
role.
The big surprise
announcement was the inclusion in the competition of Senegalese director
Ramata-Toulaye Sy. “Banel & Adama” is her first film and is the only debut
movie to play in the competition. It tells a Romeo and Juliet-type story but
has a twist in that Adama refuses to accept the patriarchal society’s norms,
which profoundly impacts the community when Banel becomes the village leader.
But it is not just these
two debutants demonstrating the tectonic shift eastwards in cinema. Also
returning to competition are two previous Palme d’Or winners, Turkey’s Nuri
Bilge Ceylan and Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda.
Add to this line-up
China’s Wang Bing with his new documentary “Jeunesse” (one of two films he has
playing at the festival); the Vietnamese-French filmmaker Tran Anh Hung, whose
latest film is an adaptation of a French historical novel; and
Brazilian-Algerian director Karin Ainouz’s “Firebrand” starring Jude Law and
Alicia Vikander, and it is clear that this is more than just a symbolic effort
to represent other sections of world cinema.
Speaking world languagesPerhaps this should come
as no surprise. The profile of films from Asia and the Arab world has exploded
in the past decade. The apex of this was Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite”, which
not only won the Palme d’Or in 2020 but then went on to win the Oscar,
the first foreign language film to do so. The Oscar win for “Parasite” rather
than its Cannes win was significant. It was a sign that films no longer needed
to be in English to be culturally significant in the English-language world.
Netflix, Amazon, et al. have changed the game with their combination of global and local programming. They realized that to attract the wealthy Middle East and Asian populations to their platform, it pays to stream content relevant to them.
Paradoxically, the
cinematic world may have its apparent nemesis, the streaming services, to thank
for this. Netflix, Amazon, et al. have changed the game with their combination
of global and local programming. They realized that to attract the wealthy Middle
East and Asian populations to their platform, it pays to stream content
relevant to them. And with access to these products, global audiences have
demonstrated they are willing to take chances on films such as the
Telugu-language epic “RRR”, pushing it all the way to the Oscars. This is truly
significant to Cannes, which has been looking east for sponsorship deals with
companies such as TikTok in recent years, and the programmers have taken heed.
There is also a question
of quality. One only needs to look at the myriad sections of the Cannes to see
that Arab cinema has never been in better shape. In the “Un Certain Regard”
section, “Goodbye Julia” is the first Sudanese film to be in the official
selection of Cannes. Also playing in this section are two Moroccan films, Asmae
El Moudir’s documentary “The Mother of All Lies” and Kamal Lazraq’s “Hounds”.
Morocco also features in
the Directors’ Fortnight selection with Faouzi Bensaidi’s “Deserts”.
And the Jordanian film “Inshallah a Boy” by Amjad Al Rasheed is
in Critic’s Week.
Asian films also move
beyond being Japanese, Indian, Chinese, and Korean fare. Although, there are
plenty of those too. One of the most anticipated films at Cannes is the
coming-of-age tale “If Only I could Hibernate”, the first film from Mongolia to
feature at the festival.
Authentic voicesYet this shift is more
than about sponsorship and money. It is the sign of a huge cultural change that
took place in Europe and North America during the pandemic fueled by movements
such as Black Lives Matter and Me Too. While it would be churlish to say that
either of these movements have done anything more than move the dial on the representation
of women and black people in the film world, the debate around them contributed
to a more extensive conversation over who gets to tell stories.
It is now crucial that the people telling the stories have authentic voices and are not telling European or American stories by proxy. And as the streaming services are demonstrating, audiences will seek out films that speak directly to them, in a voice recognizable to them.
It is now crucial that
the people telling the stories have authentic voices and are not telling European
or American stories by proxy. And as the streaming services are demonstrating,
audiences will seek out films that speak directly to them, in a voice
recognizable to them. Cannes has taken note. To be relevant today in a global
entertainment market, they must search out and embrace movies from beyond
traditional boundaries. Africa, Asia, and the Arab world have been the primary
beneficiaries.
Kaleem Aftab is a film critic,
author of the biography “Spike Lee: That’s My Story and I’m
Sticking to It”, and Director of International Programming for
the Red Sea International Film Festival. Copyright: Syndication Bureau.
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