This Arab film­mak­er is secret­ly screen­ing his LGBTQ+ films in the Mid­dle East

It’s not often that host­ing film screen­ings in the Mid­dle East comes with a six-step safe­ty pre­cau­tion, but that’s the posi­tion Egypt­ian-Amer­i­can film­mak­er Sam Abbas’ found him­self in while pre­sent­ing his debut fea­ture The Wed­ding at undis­closed venues across the region recently.

Set in New York, the film fol­lows Rami (Abbas him­self), a young Mus­lim man who pre­pares for his upcom­ing wed­ding to an Amer­i­can woman while keep­ing his sex­u­al­i­ty a secret due to his reli­gious and cul­tur­al upbring­ing. Abbas tells LWLies that the plot mir­rors his own expe­ri­ences: ​“Every char­ac­ter in the film is me, to some extent. The film over­all is very true to my sto­ry, even down to Rami’s rela­tion­ship with his fam­i­ly. My fam­i­ly, for instance, don’t know about my work, nor do they know about my sexuality.”

Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties in the West can have a com­plex and fraught rela­tion­ship with sex, with the top­ic often shroud­ed in secre­cy and shame – at least to out­siders. A sig­nif­i­cant amount of Abbas’ film­mak­ing lead­ing up to and includ­ing The Wed­ding is tes­ta­ment to the lega­cy of sex­u­al repres­sion. ​“Ear­ly in life I felt an enor­mous guilt when­ev­er being sex­u­al­ly active because of [my] reli­gious and cul­tur­al upbring­ing,” he says. ​“To this day, the only per­son I can speak with about sex is my broth­er. Actu­al­ly my father prefers that if we’re all watch­ing a film for it to be PG-13 to avoid sex scenes – and I’m 25!”

The film couldn’t be more time­ly, giv­en that gay Mus­lim men in the UK face being pres­sured into het­ero­sex­u­al mar­riages. Mean­while, crack­downs on the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty in the region rarely pro­vokes an inter­na­tion­al out­cry, as in the case of Egypt­ian police arrest­ing 10 LGBTQ+ peo­ple ear­li­er this year.

The non-exis­tence of queer cin­e­ma in the Mid­dle East, Abbas stress­es, presents mul­ti­ple chal­lenges for its queer audi­ences to see their lived expe­ri­ences reflect­ed back, from Beirut to Bagh­dad. ​“I felt it was nec­es­sary for the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty to watch and enjoy a film they can relate to in the­atres, just like they can watch and enjoy a non-queer film.”

He select­ed sev­er­al coun­tries in the region, includ­ing Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia and Lebanon. The latter’s inclu­sion is par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant, because while Lebanon’s atti­tudes towards its LGBTQ+ res­i­dents is gen­er­al­ly seen to be pro­gres­sive, in May this year elec­toral can­di­dates called for the decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty for the first time in the country’s his­to­ry, mark­ing the first high-rank­ing endorse­ment of LGBTQ+ pro­tec­tion of its kind in the Arab world. Even so, chal­lenges remain: though Lebanon became the first coun­try in the Arab world to host Pride Week in 2017, author­i­ties forced the organ­is­er to can­cel what was left of the event to be released.

Abbas is unable to dis­close where in these coun­tries the screen­ings hap­pened, but he describes the turnout to these invite only events as ​“real­ly good”. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the direc­tor encoun­tered a num­ber of chal­lenges screen­ing the film. ​“It wasn’t easy, he admits”. ​“My busi­ness part­ner and I were both very scared till the last screen­ing was com­plet­ed.” A num­ber of safe­ty mea­sure­ments were tak­en to ensure the screen­ings went smooth­ly, includ­ing no reporters, audi­ences sign­ing a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment, no cam­eras or smart phones and no re-entry. Abbas reveals that these pre­cau­tions even extend­ed to his own atten­dance. ​“The film received a lot of press and we didn’t want me being fol­lowed or [jea­por­dis­ing] the safe­ty of the attendees.”

The screen­ings have under­stand­ably been met with oppo­si­tion. But it was the audi­ences’ atten­tion span that was the biggest cause for con­cern for Abbas. ​“There were a few here and there that didn’t have the atten­tion span to sit through it! It’s fun­ny though as the first cut of this film was over two hours long and the final cut is only an hour and 15 minutes.”

Ulti­mate­ly, Abbas hopes that The Wed­ding will ush­er in a new era of queer cin­e­ma with a con­nec­tion to the region, in part to him launch­ing Alexan­dria-based ArabQ Films dur­ing the last Berlin Film Fes­ti­val. ArabQ marks the first-ever Arab-based pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny entire­ly ded­i­cat­ed to pro­vid­ing a plat­form for LGBTQ+ nar­ra­tives with­in the Mus­lim and Arab communities.

“The films we’re look­ing to pro­duce require that all projects have a link to the Mid­dle East­ern expe­ri­ence and for every direc­tor and/​or lead pro­duc­er self-iden­ti­fy as queer, gay, bisex­u­al and/​or trans­gen­der. I’d real­ly like to help open the door for [them] to tell per­son­al sto­ries and bring aware­ness to those sto­ries.” Fol­low­ing the film’s launch, Abbas has received a num­ber of unso­licit­ed scripts. ​“Clear­ly, it’s encour­aged many cre­atives,” he says. ​“We’ve real­ly opened a dialogue.”

The Wed­ding screens at New York’s Cin­e­ma Vil­lage from 14 – 20 December.