CAIRO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL -- 18-28 NOVEMBER All these films... There are many must-see films among those on offer at this year's Cairo International Film Festival, Mona Anis and Hani Mustafa advise on what to watch on the last two days of the festival With more than 120 films playing during the ten days of the 32nd Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF), the question of what to watch, and how to squeeze in as many films as possible during the short period of the festival, is something of an ordeal for all lovers of the seventh art in Egypt. Every year film fans find themselves in a situation rather like that of a starving man confronted with an unexpected banquet: how to eat as much as possible before the delicious food is whisked away. One way of dealing with this ordeal is to study the festival schedule as soon as it is released (usually a week before the event), mark a few films as "must see" and then attend some of the films in the competition. After that, and depending on the amount of time still available, a good strategy is to try to catch films that others have recommended, which is made easier by the fact that most films are screened two or three times at different venues. Must-see films tend to be those included in the festival's "out of competition" category, since it is unlikely that top filmmakers will choose Cairo over Cannes, Venice or Berlin as the venue to release their films. Among the 16 films included in this category this year are a Turkish film, Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys, and an Italian film, Matteo Garrone's Gomorra, both of which won top awards at the 2008 Cannes Festival. Among the British and American films included in the category are Ken Loach's It's a Free World, Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding, Stuart Townsend's Battle in Seattle and Sean Penn's Into the Wild, all of them internationally acclaimed works. The category also includes a good mix of Asian and European films. If you have not seen them, there is still a chance to see Loach's film, together with Three Monkeys and Gomorra, today and tomorrow during the festival's final days of screenings. (See Listings opposite page for the festival schedule.) Aside from the "out of competition" films and those included in the three competition categories of International, Arab and Digital, this year's CIFF features six non- competition categories: Spanish Cinema, reflecting Spain's position as guest of honour at this year's festival; African Cinema; Islam in International Cinema; Human Rights Films (a special tribute commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights); Festival of Festivals; and Information Films. Films in the Arab Films competition receive most attention among the mini-reviews that follow, but we also sampled films in the other categories. Two of the three Arab films mentioned below are Palestinian, while the other is Egyptian. All three films are included in the Arab Films competition, and one is likely to win the top award announced tomorrow. The three other films reviewed come from the non-competition categories and include the German film Pizza and Jam in the Festival of Festivals category, the Turkish film Havar in the Human Rights category, and the Spanish Return to Hansala from the Islam in International Cinema category THE EGYPTIAN FILM Basra, directed by Ahmed Rachwan, takes its name from a play on the Arabic word Basra, which is both the name of a popular Egyptian card game and the Iraqi port city of Basra. The events of the film unfold during the spring of 2003 at the time of the US-led invasion of Iraq. The main character is a gloomy Egyptian intellectual who has divorced his wife and abandoned his study of law in France in order to return to Egypt and become a photographer. His existential angst is intensified by an atmosphere of political defeat, especially in Iraq, which the film suggests is a metaphor for defeat throughout the Arab world. What is happening in Iraq, the film seems to be saying, is not so very different from what is happening in Egypt, where life seems to be permanently teetering on the edge of an abyss. In the opening scene of the film, immediately following the credits, the audience is presented with an anti-war demonstration in Cairo, during which the demonstrators shout, "Those who are attacking Baghdad today will attack Waraq tomorrow," Waraq being a poor area in the heart of Cairo. Following the fall of Baghdad, the protagonist is filmed weeping bitterly in a scene reminiscent of Youssef Chahine's The Sparrow, in which one of the characters weeps when watching Nasser on TV announcing defeat in the June 1967 war. There is much in Basra that reminds one of the Egyptian political films made in the early 1970s that dealt with the devastating effects of defeat in the Six-Day War on Egyptians in general and on intellectuals in particular. However, Basra 's imitation of the powerful Egyptian films of the late 1960s and early 70s is not to the film's advantage, since the director seems to have fallen prey to nostalgia and seems unable to root the experience of his characters in the 21st century. The film's main character is too rigid and often seems to function more as a mouthpiece for the director than as a rounded character in his own right. Nevertheless, Basra is a film that is well worth seeing, and it is directed by a director who has a lot to offer outside the well- worn grooves of mainstream cinema. There are many technically accomplished aspects to this film, among them the cinematography, which earned Victor Credi, Basra 's cinematographer, a top award at this year's Valencia Film Festival in Spain. The difficulty all concerned experienced in making the film is also worth mentioning. Basra is Rachwan's debut feature, and it was originally made in digital format as befits its self- financed character. Later the film was turned into 35 mm format for mainstream distribution by a Syrian producer who saw the film's potential. Such stories have become common among Egypt's independent filmmakers, many of whom cannot find producers for their films and end up shooting in digital. Such filmmakers are, of course, the cream of the Egyptian film industry, and they represent the hope that it may one day recover from its present ailing state. THE DIRECTOR OF THE PALESTINIAN film Salt of the Sea, Annemarie Jacir, seems to have been more fortunate in finding producers, this time mainly French, to support her film. Salt of the Sea is an artistically accomplished moving film about a young Palestinian woman, born in Brooklyn in a working-class community, who dreams of returning to Palestine to see the house that belonged to her grandparents in Jaffa before they were driven into exile during the 1948 war. At the beginning of the film, this young woman, named Soraya and very ably played by Suheir Hammad, is shown at Tel Aviv airport in Israel, where she is strip-searched and subjected to harsh questioning. Her coming to Israel at all has only been possible owing to her holding an American passport. She insists on telling the Israeli security guards the truth about her situation: she is a Palestinian, and she is coming to live permanently in Ramallah. Eventually she is granted a two-week visa. Once in Ramallah, Soraya meets a young Palestinian man, Emad, played by Saleh Bakri, who unlike her dreams of leaving Palestine. They seem to be on diverging tracks until Soraya fails to recover her grandfather's savings from the bank in which he deposited them before leaving in 1948. When Emad is refused a Canadian visa for the fourth time, he agrees to join Soraya in robbing the bank that refused to give her the money she feels is legally hers. The pair then set out on a road trip around the country of their forebears, now taken over by Israel. First they go to Jaffa to swim in the sea and see the house of Soraya's grandparents, now occupied by an Israeli woman who seems welcoming and understanding. When Soraya asks to buy the house from her she gets angry, however, and tries to call the police. Soraya and Emad leave, and, following many bitter-sweet encounters on the road, end up in the ruins of the Arab village of al-Dawyma, the same village from which Emad's family was driven out in 1948. Here they spend the night, and in the morning they talk about the possibility of having a child on this spot that has been erased from the map following the establishment of the state of Israel. A group of Israeli schoolchildren then visit the site, brought by their history teacher who tells them about their Hebrew forebears. The teacher tells Soraya, pretending to be an American tourist, that camping on the site is forbidden because the area is all state property. Once on the road again, the pair's disguise as Jews is finally penetrated by the Israeli police who deport Soraya to America and take Emad into custody. The film ends with Soraya again at the airport being subjected yet to another brutal interrogation. WHILE JACIR'S FILM, despite the anger and desperation of its two main characters, is often funny and fast-paced as befits a road movie, with the characters driving along the beautiful Mediterranean coast amid the picturesque towns of Jaffa and Haifa that used to be part of Palestine, Rachid Masharawy's film Laila's Birthday is a claustrophobic piece in which the main character, a taxi driver, drives round and round in circles in the chaotic traffic of Ramallah. The taxi driver in question, Abu Laila, used to be a judge in an Arab country, and with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority he has returned to Ramallah in order to take up a position as a judge in Palestine. However, as his papers are being processed very slowly, he is forced to take a job driving his brother-in-law's taxi. The film's events, or rather non-events, all take place on one day, Laila's birthday, Laila being Abu Laila's daughter. As we see him leaving home in the morning, his wife reminds him to buy a cake and to come home early to celebrate. However, in the hours he spends driving the taxi, he encounters many unusual characters who ask him to drive to various destinations, including a hospital and a cemetery. The day ends with Abu Laila finding himself caught up in an Israeli targeted assassination by helicopters. Eventually, he manages to get home before the situation deteriorates further having failed to buy the birthday cake. Miraculously, however, he finds a cake on the back seat of the taxi, left by a woman who was taking the cake to visit someone in hospital only to find that he had died before she managed to reach him. Only the last few minutes of the film are likely to put a smile on the audience's faces, since most are likely to feel pleased that at least Abu Laila does not come home quite empty- handed. However, that does not save one from the thought that he will now have to repeat the same depressing day's work the following day. Had it not been for the masterful acting of Mohamed Bakri, one of Palestine's most accomplished actors, in the title role, this film would have been depressing to watch. Moreover, it was cheering to realise that Saleh Bakri, who plays Emad in Salt of this Sea, is the son of Mohamed Bakri, who plays the main role in Laila's Birthday. Anyone old enough to remember Costa Gavras's 1983 film Hanna K, in which Mohamed Bakri plays the role of Salim, a young Palestinian trying to reclaim his family's house inside Israel with the help of Hanna Kaufmann, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, will immediately recognise the physical resemblance between Emad in Salt of this Sea and Salim in Hanna K. Salt of this Sea is also connected with Hanna K in other ways, the film seeming to act as a kind of corrective to the dreams of 25 years ago of a peaceful resolution to the Arab- Israeli conflict. While in Costa Gavras's film the uprooted Palestinian character is "balanced" by a sympathetic Jew -- something which did not stop Israel's supporters in the US from branding the film anti-Israeli and forcing its withdrawal from US cinemas -- in Salt of the Sea there are fewer possibilities for dialogue. This is a Palestinian film by a Palestinian filmmaker that speaks directly about Palestinian dispossession, and it does not attempt to balance "good Arabs" with "good Israelis". Indeed, the only seemingly sympathetic Israeli character in the film when confronted by the right of her Palestinian guest to the house in which she is living resorts to calling upon the repressive powers of the Israeli state. In films such as this by Annemarie Jacir the Palestinians are able to represent themselves, and it is heartening that the film is finding international recognition, Salt of the Sea having been entered in the competition at Cannes this year and being currently on show in cinemas in France. TURNING TO NON-ARAB FILMS, the Turkish film Havar, directed by Mehmet Guleruez, was shown in the Human Rights category as it deals with the subject of honour killings. Set in the southern Turkish town of Batman, the film deals with the series of suicides by young women that also lies at the heart of Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk's novel Snow. Unlike Pamuk's novel, however, which leaves the mystery unresolved, Havar implies that these suicides are in fact honour killings. The film tells the story of a young woman called Havar who is rumoured to be involved with a young man against the wishes of her family. Sehmuz, her cousin, who is, according to traditions, supposed to marry her, persuades Havar's at-first reluctant father to save the honour of the family by killing his daughter. The film deals with the father's love for his daughter and the pressure he feels to save his reputation in the eyes of the local community. Havar also contains a secondary plot, in which a lonely young man writes letters to an unknown person and deposits the letters by a grave. This grave, we discover at the end of the film, is that of his sister. On the whole this is an average film, only saved by the eye of its director. The latter, originally a documentary filmmaker, proves adept at including many details from the local scenery which lend the film a stunning natural backdrop. THE GERMAN film Pizza and Jam, directed by Oliver Dieckmann and screened in the Festival of Festivals category, deals with the life of a talented architect called Florian who unexpectedly loses his job and finds his life disintegrating before his eyes. He is forced to move into a rundown apartment and to work in a pizza parlour owned by an Italian couple. He lies to his family about his job and hates his new neighbours and co-workers. However, he is slowly drawn into their lives and helps the female owner of the pizza restaurant to regain the love of her husband. The film features a retired professor of Arabic, Buchner, who starts making jam to give to his neighbours. He is attracted to one female neighbour in particular, a Syrian, and he dreams of having closer relations with her. She is accompanied by a threatening looking Arab man, however, and, to get him out of the way, Buchner reports the man to the police. They do not press charges, and at the end of the film Buchner commits suicide. FINALLY, THE SPANISH FILM Return to Hansala, directed by Chus Giutierrez and screened on the opening night of the festival, is a film about illegal immigration, a topic dealt with by many films at this year's CIFF. It tells the story of a Moroccan woman who loses her brother in an illegal attempt at immigration to Spain and must then bear the responsibility of returning his body to his homeland. Compared to other Spanish films showcased in the Spanish Cinema section, this was a rather ordinary film and the organisers seem to have felt that it did not belong to the Spanish section of the festival at all, since they put it in the Islam in International Cinema category instead. Why this film was chosen for the festival's opening night is anybody's guess. The festival could have opened with Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's film Volver, which, while it came out in 2006 is being shown at the festival and is by one of the greatest living world filmmakers who is not only Spanish but is also Andulcian to boot.
