Calgary Arab Film Festival

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Films

 

• The Baby Doll Night
• Reel Bad Arabs
• Barakat
• Salt of This Sea
• Falafel
• What a Wonderful World
• The Heart of Jenin
• Whatever Lola Wants
 

The Baby Doll Night

Can one night of pleasure mend sixty years of pain?

Hossam receives the good news that he'll be going home (Egypt) for New Year's as the American Egyptian friendship committee is holding its annual meeting in Egypt this year.

As the new years is a couple of days away Hossam is eager to get home and celebrate it with his wife whom he hasn’t seen in a year and accordingly buys her a darling gift, a baby doll which he hopes will come in handy on this particular night. With only one thing on his mind for this night, Hossam will do whatever it takes to be with his wife. But an airport pickup, a wrong bag later, a twist of events thrusts him into a terrorist plot to blow up the hotel he's staying at. Hossam's marital union doesn't seem to be on destiny's agenda. Mixed up in a series of events and running into a variety of obstacles that take the form of every problem in the world today from the war in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, the American / Israeli issue to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.

What destiny foresaw for man … every tragedy that the mankind has faced up until this day seems to want to stop this legitimate reunion between husband and wife.

The never ending night is packed with these days' never ending conflicts between civilizations and cultures. Will Hossam reunite with his wife and celebrate the New Year's coming and perhaps the coming of new life…of new hope in midst of the madness … Will he be caught in the terrorist plot? Will he even make it through the night?

Awards:
Best Screenplay – Brussels International Independent Film Festival

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Reel Bad Arabs

This groundbreaking documentary dissects a slanderous aspect of cinematic history that has run virtually unchallenged from the earliest days of silent film to today's biggest Hollywood blockbusters. Featuring acclaimed author Dr. Jack Shaheen, the film explores a long line of degrading images of Arabs--from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs and gun-wielding "terrorists"--along the way offering devastating insights into the origin of these stereotypic images, their development at key points in US history, and why they matter so much today.

Shaheen shows how the persistence of these images over time has served to naturalize prejudicial attitudes toward Arabs and Arab culture, in the process reinforcing a narrow view of individual Arabs and the effects of specific US domestic and internationl policies on their lives. By inspiring critical thinking about the social, political, and basic human consequences of leaving these Hollywood caricatures unexamined, the film challenges viewers to recognize the urgent need for counter-narratives that do justice to the diversity and humanity of Arab people and the reality and richness of Arab history and culture.

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Barakat

Algeria. The 1990s. AMEL, a vibrant thirty-year-old, is an emergency room doctor at the hospital. KHADIDJA, a nurse in her early sixties, assists her with a great deal of efficiency and a healthy dose of humour. After work, Amel waits for MOURAD, her journalist husband. But she has to make an urgent trip to the hospital with BILAL, the young son of her neighbours.

When Amel returns the following evening, Mourad has disappeared. And so she sets off by car, seeking out an Islamic resistance movement. Khadidja, who has insisted on coming with her, recovers the reflexes, trickery and disguises of her days fighting the French army in the early 1960s. Captured by the Islamic group, the two women are saved by its leader, HADJ SLIMANE, who thus pays off a debt that he has owed Khadidja since the first Algerian war. Once they are released, Amel and Khadidja set off again to return to the village. In the mountains, they find refuge in the isolated home of a lonely OLD MAN. In a cart drawn by a mule, Amel and Khadidja, along with the old man, continue their journey.

Awards:
Best Arab Film – Dubai International Film Festival 2007
Oumarou Ganda Award for Best First Work – Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou 2007
Best Screenplay- Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou 2007
Best Music - Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou 2007

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Salt of This Sea

Soraya, born in Brooklyn in a working class community of Palestinian refugees, discovers that her grandfather’s savings were frozen in a bank account in Jaffa when he was exiled in 1948. Stubborn, passionate and determined to reclaim what is hers she fulfills her life-long dream of “returning” to Palestine. Slowly she is taken apart by the reality around her and is forced to confront her own internal anger. She meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever. Tired of the constraints that dictate their lives, they know in order to be free, they must take things into their own hands, even if it’s illegal.

Awards:
First Prize, Best Film – Sguardi Altrove Film Festival, Italy 209
Best First Film – Traverse City Film Festival, 2009
Best of Fest Select – Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, 2009
Audience Choice Award – Houston Palestine Film Festival 2009
Audience Choice Award: Best Feature – Chicago Palestine Film Festival, 2009
Honorable Mention – Cairo Refugee Film Festival, 2009
Special Jury Prize – Osians Aisian and Arab Feilm Festival 2008
Fipresci Prize, International Critics Award – International Federation of Film Critics, 2008
Randa Chahal Prize - Carthage Film Festival 2008
Asian and Arab Competition Award- Cinefan - Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema 2008
Muhr Award for Best Screenplay – Dubai International Film Festival 2008
Audience Choice Runner Up – Toronto Palestine Film Festival 2008
Cinema in Motion Award – San Sebastian International Film Festival 2007

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Falafel

A summer evening in Beirut.
One night in the life of Toufic, a young Lebanese man, and his nocturnal rides. Between his family, friends and love affairs, he tries to seize every day of his existence. Each second is the most important.

Soon he discovers that having a normal life in this country is a luxury out of his reach. Fifteen years after the war has ended, a volcano lies on every street corner, like a ticking bomb that is ready to explode.

Awards:
Golden Bayard for Best Film - NAMUR International Film Festival ,Belgium 2006
Golden Bayard for Best Music - NAMUR International Film Festival , Belgium 2006
Special Jury Prize
Annonay International Film Festival
25th Edition, France 2008
Palmera de Bronce for Best Film, - XXVIII MOSTRA de VALENCIA, Spain 2007
Audience Award - LILLE International Film Festival, France 2007
Best First Film Award - ROTTERDAM Arab Film Festival, Nederland 2007
ART AWARD (Best First Film Award) - ALEXANDRIA International Film Festival, Egypt 2007
Bronze Dagger for Best Film, Muscat International Film Festival, Oman 2008
Silver Muhr for Best Film - DUBAI International Film Festival, UAE 2006

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What a Wonderful World

Souad is a prostitute whose best friend is Kenza, a tough traffic cop. Kamel is a stony-eyed contract killer who receives his hit orders via the Internet; he is also Souad’s favorite customer. When Kenza falls in love with Kamel, the two begin a bizarre courtship doomed by their disparate lines of work, and a persistent cyber-snooping hacker who stumbles upon the site where Kamel receives his murderous contracts. Moroccan actor-director Faouzi Bensaïdi’s promiscuously stylish film is a new vision of an old culture, unveiling an uncommon Casablanca caught in a world wide web of associations and consequences.

Awards:
Nominated for the Golden Star Award – Marrakech International Film Festival 2006

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The Heart of Jenin

The Heart of Jenin is the story of Ahmed Chatib, a Palestinian boy shot by Israeli soldiers whose father, Ismail Chatib, decided, within twelve hours, to donate his son’s organs to six Israeli children to save their lives.

One and a half years have passed since then. To find out how his deed changed the lives of the recipients’ families, Ismail travels throughout Israel, from its northern hills on the Lebanese border, past the contended Holy City of Jerusalem and up to the edge of the Negev Desert in the south.

The film is a trip through occupied territory and hearts occupied by prejudice. It leads us to the families who have learned to overcome their prejudices and to families who still speak of the misfortune of having to live with the organ of an Arab. It is the story of a humanitarian peace gesture that seemed, for a short instant, to prevail over the insoluble conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Awards:
Best Documentary Cinema for Peace Award, International Film Festival in Dubai, 2009
Audience Award, International Film Festival in Dubai, 2009

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Whatever Lola Wants

Lola is feeling unfulfilled. For most of her twenty-five years she’s had a single dream – to dance professionally. But her daily life in New York is a headlong rush between her dance classes and her boring part-time job as a mail carrier. There’s no time for love, and success seems further away with each passing year. Maybe she should abandon her dreams and commit to a permanent job at the Post Office, with all the benefits of lifetime security and an eventual pension.

To raise her spirits, her best friend Yussef tells her the story of his idol Ismahan, an oriental dancer from Egypt. Ismahan became famous but she had to struggle against huge odds to make it. Inspired, Lola decides to persevere.

Then Lola meets Zack, a handsome graduate student from Cairo. Lola falls head over heels in love. But their romance is cut short when Zack suddenly flies back home, leaving only an enigmatic note, telling her not to give up her dreams.

Lola decides she has nothing to lose. She spends all her savings on a ticket to Cairo.

But when she arrives Zack is strange and distant. They have an argument, and Lola is left stranded in a down-at-heel hotel.

She decides to seek out Ismahan. But when she mentions the famous dancer’s name, all anyone will say is that she doesn’t dance any more. Intrigued, Lola tracks down Ismahan, only to find a severe, reclusive woman who seems to have nothing in common with the glorious creature Yussef described. Following a scandal, Ismahan has retired from the stage. But Lola persuades her to take her on as a student. Gradually, an edgy relationship forms between the prickly Ismahan and the irrepressible New Yorker.

Under Ismahan’s tuition, Lola blossoms as a dancer and finds her heartache over Zack less and less painful. And through knowing Lola, Ismahan starts to open up, re-discovering a capacity for delight and self-esteem. A strong and unexpected friendship develops between these two very different women.

Then an encounter with an attractive older man, a dance promoter, leads to Lola’s increasing professional success in Cairo. But Lola’s success puts a strain on her friendship with her teacher, and Ismahan starts to retreat once more into bitterness and seclusion. Lola, on the edge of becoming a major star, is confronted with a series of painful choices.

By the time she returns to New York, she has become a true success, both as a dancer and as a human being.

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