Yet Tunisian filmmakers have developed their industry by introducing new genres, technologies and ideas. Two key examples of ingenuity and innovation appearing in country cinema are Dachra Abdelhamid Bouchnak (2018) and Tlamess Ala Eddine Slim (2019). Dachra is the first horror film in the country and has appeared in a wave of upcoming sex films in the country, with the use of horror ropes to criticize religious leadership reveals a new way of feeling. for filmmakers to get around censorship. At the same time, using a very specific form of surrealism, Tlamess touches on militarism, defining existential gender and ennui roles while giving him the first glimpse of full-faced nudity. arab cinema.
Elsewhere, in Yemen, Libya and Syria, the main focus on filming has been to reflect the declining conditions in these countries, as found in several documentary programs by manufacturers. films now in exile such as Freedom Fields (2018) London-based Libyan director; Syrian Director in Copenhagen, Feras Fayyad, The Cave (2019); Waad Al-Kateab co-directed another Syrian for Sama, recording her way out of her home country; and Yemen Sufian Abulohom, based in Los Angeles: Silent War (2018).
The future of Arab cinema
A decade later, the revolutionary energy of the Arab Spring is still visible, in life and on the big screen. The popular revolutions in Algeria and Lebanon in 2019 and 2020 have spawned images that accept similar narratives to the films in the early Arab Spring – from Karim Aïnouz’s colorful portrait of Algerian revolutionary youth, Nardjes A. (2020), to several Lebanese projects in Denial of Pipeline that may have been canceled after the summer explosion in Beirut in the hope of an end happy campaigners.
In Sudan, meanwhile, a revolution took place nine years after the onset of the first wave of the Arab Spring which has also led to the rise of cinema in the country. But as Sudanese filmmakers reflect on events, it is clear from their films that they have learned the valuable lesson that a revolution could fail at any moment and that the road to democracy is long. and heavy. Two documentaries from 2019 capture the essence of a country that is about to change but still cast doubt on its visible potential for a comprehensive institutional review. In Suhaib Gasmelbari’s Talking About Trees, a group of filmmakers try to revive an old cinema outside Khartoum just to resist the choking of untapped red tape. expected to be released shortly. The same brutal rules are facing a group of female athletes struggling to assemble the country’s first women’s football team in Marwa Zein’s Khartoum Offside, which confirms that the country’s major patronage challenges reform efforts.
For the original revolution? The legacy and outcome of the Arab Spring continues to haunt the region’s cinema, but a full account of what happened in 2010 and subsequent years remains to be told. The most popular beats for the uprisings – The Square (2013) by Jehane Noujaim from Egypt; the Beauty and the named dogs from Tunisia; the programs are countless in Syria – offering straightforward edible narratives that cater to a largely Western audience ignorant of the nuances and complexities of the region and its history. And since almost every independent Arab film relies on European capital for funding, productions are usually shaped by what the West expects the Arab world to be, and at eventually they are judged by western critics who have little knowledge of the area.
The rise of the Sudanese cinema and the remarkable development of Tunisian films will ensure that the spirit of the Arab Spring shines out on the big screen. The true story of the rise and fall of the Arab Revolution, on the other hand, is still waiting to be told.
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