The Arab female film­mak­ers break­ing the mould

Shub­bak (mean­ing ​‘win­dow’) is a London’s largest fes­ti­val of con­tem­po­rary Arab cul­ture. The film pro­gramme, run­ning at Ciné Lumière and the Bar­bi­can between 3 – 9 July, looks to ques­tion image cre­ation and the role of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, bring­ing in both vet­er­an direc­tors and emerg­ing voic­es to reframe nar­ra­tives and imag­ine the future. Arab women’s voic­es are at the cen­tre of the pro­gramme – dis­tinct and bold in both sub­ject mat­ter and form, find­ing the lan­guage to explore dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives with sub­tle­ty, cre­ativ­i­ty and vision.

Syr­ia is a cen­tral focus, with the UK pre­mière of Soudade Kaadan’s debut fea­ture doc­u­men­tary Obscure, vet­er­an Syr­i­an direc­tor Hala Alabdala’s Farouk, Besieged Like Me, a rare screen­ing of Reem Ali’s Foam plus Anas Kha­laf and Rana Kazkaz’s short film Mare Nos­trum.

The voic­es of Syr­i­an female direc­tors are impor­tant for the dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives they offer: sub­tle, lay­ered, some­times even tan­gen­tial under­stand­ing of the big pic­ture – anchor­ing past real­ties to bet­ter under­stand the sit­u­a­tion we see today, reflect­ing on the fate of chil­dren who will live with the destruc­tion of their coun­try, posi­tion­ing cul­ture as a key bridge between cultures.

Reem Ali’s Foam, made in 2008 – before the Syr­i­an rev­o­lu­tion of 2011 – is reflec­tive of an impulse among a gen­er­a­tion of young Syr­i­an film­mak­ers to push for more direct lan­guage, test­ing the bound­aries of what can be said in an author­i­tar­i­an régime. The film paints a sen­si­tive por­trait of a Syr­i­an cou­ple who paid heav­i­ly for their polit­i­cal activism through the prism of their every day – try­ing to bal­ance care for a men­tal­ly dis­abled fam­i­ly mem­ber with work, mem­o­ries of their expe­ri­ences of polit­i­cal prison and a long­ing for change.

Hala Alab­dal­la is one of the country’s most promi­nent cin­e­mat­ic voic­es. Her 2006 direc­to­r­i­al debut, I Am the One Who Brings Flow­ers to Her Grave, pro­vid­ed a strik­ing­ly dif­fer­ent approach to sto­ry­telling from the direc­tors that she had spent years col­lab­o­rat­ing with – from Omar Ami­ralay to Ous­sama Mohammed and Mohammed Malas. Her lat­est film, Farouk, Besieged Like Me explores the things we’re not talk­ing about when it comes to Syr­ia – lit­er­a­ture, food, iden­ti­ty, cross-cul­tur­al under­stand­ing. The film’s sub­ject, Farouk Mar­dam Bey, is an edi­tor for the French pub­lish­ing house Actes Sud, which pub­lish­es books from the Arab world – he is quite lit­er­al­ly a bridge between cul­tures, the cura­tor of Ara­bic fic­tion that will be trans­lat­ed and made avail­able in French.

Through the prism of Farouk’s world, and in the inti­ma­cy of his kitchen as he cooks for friends, the film reflects on the seman­tics of the future. Over din­ner, his guests – writ­ers and thinkers from across the region – unpick ques­tions of belong­ing and the role of lan­guage in today’s con­flict­ed times. The words of late Pales­tin­ian poet Mah­moud Dar­wish, a close friend of Mardam-Bey’s and whose words are ref­er­enced in the title, res­onate loud­er than ever. This is a unique and thought-pro­vok­ing doc­u­men­tary that invites you to the table to reflect on press­ing ques­tions about Syr­ia, cul­ture and identity.

Shub­bak will also see the UK pre­mière of Obscure by Soudade Kaadan, a film that in the director’s own words ​“explores the impos­si­bil­i­ty to ver­bal­ly express what is hap­pen­ing in Syr­ia now.” The film’s sub­ject is the silence of a child, Ahmad, who has been left trau­ma­tised by the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. In some ways, Obscure also marks Kaadan’s own break from silence, hav­ing not picked up a cam­era for four years, unable to engage in the end­less cycle of vio­lence by report­ing it through film. She describes it as ​“an attempt to under­stand the rela­tion between the vir­tu­al world and the real­i­ty in time of war where our dai­ly life is invad­ed by the hor­ror.” And as the title sug­gests, it is a reflec­tion on the shad­ow such real­i­ties cast – trau­ma, a real­i­ty that a gen­er­a­tion must engage with and move on from.

Flip­ping the lens to see the inevitabil­i­ty of trau­ma, is Mare Nos­trum, which screens as part of the Imag­ined Futures short film strand, in which direc­tors Rana Kazkaz and Anas Kha­laf cap­ture the dilem­mas lived by many on the Mediter­ranean shores by reflect­ing a Syr­i­an parent’s choic­es to save his daugh­ter. It feels sur­re­al, the real­i­ty is just that.

The broad­er region is also rep­re­sent­ed through films by some of the most excit­ing voic­es in the region today. Laris­sa San­sour and Mou­nia Akl’s short films also take us into unex­pect­ed realms – in Nation Estate, mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary artist Laris­sa San­sour (whose work is also cur­rent­ly fea­tured in Barbican’s exhi­bi­tion Into the Unknown: A Jour­ney through Sci­ence Fic­tion exhi­bi­tion) offers a dystopi­an, humor­ous and ver­ti­cal solu­tion to Pales­tin­ian state­hood: one colos­sal sky­scraper hous­ing the entire Pales­tin­ian pop­u­la­tion, now final­ly liv­ing the high life.

Mean­while, the future is imag­ined with both humour and defi­ance in Mou­nia Akl’s Sub­ma­rine, receiv­ing its UK pre­mière at Shub­bak after screen­ing to much acclaim in the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val in 2016, in which wild child Hala stub­born­ly refus­es to evac­u­ate her derelict house when the garbage cri­sis in Lebanon – an ongo­ing real­i­ty since 2015 – caus­es her whole vil­lage to flee.

The fes­ti­val will also be an oppor­tu­ni­ty to revis­it Nari­mane Mari’s debut fea­ture – rad­i­cal, play­ful, bold and bril­liant Bloody Beans, in which chil­dren ​‘play’ at war and reen­act the Alger­ian war of inde­pen­dence, expand­ing on ques­tions of mem­o­ry, his­to­ry and real­i­ty – themes that she has gone on to devel­op in her new video work, Le Fort Des Fous, that is cur­rent­ly being shown at Doc­u­men­ta 14 in Kas­sel and Athens. Mari worked with chil­dren so that the ​“sub­ject could be trans­port­ed into a sur­re­al envi­ron­ment – because being sub­ject­ed to colo­nial­ism or dom­i­na­tion can only be per­ceived in this way”.

Through the eyes of a group of chil­dren from the out­skirts of Algiers who all respond­ed to a cast­ing call, we lit­er­al­ly see Lord of the Flies meet The Bat­tle of Algiers. ​“In child­hood, courage is based main­ly on the desire for sur­vival and not on the adult ide­ol­o­gy of polit­i­cal engage­ment,” explains Mari. There was no script, no imposed words or ideas – sim­ply a game of re-enacte­ment and the idea of an adven­ture lived togeth­er. The film’s trance-like sound­track by Zom­bie Zom­bie enhances a sense of play­ful­ness and free­dom, but it’s reflec­tion on colo­nial lega­cy is no less sharp – ​“is it bet­ter to obey?” asks one of the chil­dren, read­ing out a poem by Antonin Arthaud.

“Events mat­ter lit­tle, only sto­ries of those events affect us,” writes Rabih Alamed­dine in ​‘The Hakawati’. Respond­ing to this idea, Shubbak’s film sea­son presents a rich and lay­ered tapes­try of films from across the region that chal­lenge the sin­gle nar­ra­tive and reflect on the role of artis­tic cre­ation in times of change. The women’s voic­es in the mix are unit­ed by their dar­ing and curios­i­ty, to high­light dis­tinct per­spec­tives of the present sit­u­a­tion and the future to come.

Shub­bak runs 1 – 16 July. For more info vis­it shub​bak​.co​.uk