{"id":18638,"date":"2023-05-10T22:05:44","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T22:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/review-country-of-origin-is-a-coming-of-age-story-about-the-fight-for-sovereignty\/"},"modified":"2023-05-10T22:05:44","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T22:05:44","slug":"review-country-of-origin-is-a-coming-of-age-story-about-the-fight-for-sovereignty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=18638","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: \u2018Country of Origin\u2019 is a coming of age story about the fight for sovereignty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\nDUBAI: At the latest edition of the Cannes Film Festival, the most prestigious event in world cinema, Saudi Arabia plays a greater role than ever before, with five films backed by the Kingdom\u2019s Red Sea Film Fund making the official selection. It\u2019s an already-historic collection of titles, featuring the festival\u2019s first-ever film from Sudan as well as a number of groundbreaking efforts from both first-time filmmakers and some of the most acclaimed directors in the Arab world.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n<strong>\u2018Four Daughters\u2019\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\nStarring: Hend Sabri, Nour Karoui, Ichraq Matar\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nDirector: Kaouther Ben Hania\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nSome directors find it hard to follow an Academy Award nomination. Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, who is coming off the huge global success of her 2020 film \u201cThe Man Who Sold His Skin,\u201d the first Tunisian film to secure a nod for Best International Feature Film, is seemingly undeterred, with \u201cFour Daughters\u201d looking like her most ambitious film to date.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nA hybrid of fiction and documentary, the film follows Olfa, a Tunisian mother of four daughters, two of whom mysteriously disappear. Chronicling 10 years of Olfa\u2019s life from 2010 to 2020, events get increasingly harrowing as it\u2019s revealed that the two missing teenagers have been radicalized and have joined Daesh in Libya. Some of the Arab world\u2019s biggest stars, including Hend Sabri, Nour Karoui and Ichraq Matar dramatize the events that Ben Hania couldn\u2019t capture in real life. Bringing to mind groundbreaking Middle Eastern classics such as Abbas Kiarostami\u2019s \u201cClose-Up,\u201d Four Daughters is shaping up to be Ben Hania\u2019s masterpiece.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n<strong>\u2018Banel &amp; Adama\u2019\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n<strong><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"772\" src=\"https:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/sites\/default\/files\/userimages\/3915446\/banel_e_adama.jpg\" width=\"1200\"\/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\nStarring: Khady Mane, Mamadou Diallo, Binta Racine Sy, Moussa Sow\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nDirector: Ramata-Toulaye Sy\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nSenegalese filmmaker Ramata-Toulaye Sy has done what few others have done before, landing a spot for her feature directorial debut in competition for the prestigious Palme d\u2019Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. While she\u2019ll be up against tenured luminaries such as Wim Wenders, Ken Loach, Hirokazu Kore-eda and Wes Anderson, the 36-year-old is inspired by the chance to show the film to the biggest names in the business.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cI&#8217;m scared and I&#8217;m very excited. Two thousand people in the room, with the press, with the jury. That&#8217;s going to be something \u2014 it makes you dream,\u201d Sy recently told CNN.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nSet in a remote village in northern Senegal, the region in which her parents were born, \u201cBanel &amp; Adama\u201d follows a young couple whose romance is put in jeopardy when the village council voices their disapproval for the pairing, sending the entire village into chaos.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cIt&#8217;s a tragedy,\u201d Sy explained to CNN. \u201cAt first, \u2018Banel &amp; Adama\u2019 feels like a classic love story, (but) little by little, we realize that this love story focuses more on Banel than Adama, and it turns into the story of a woman trying to fulfill herself.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n<strong>\u2018Goodbye Julia\u2019\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n<strong><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"536\" src=\"https:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/sites\/default\/files\/userimages\/3915446\/goodbye_julia.jpg\" width=\"1024\"\/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\nDirector: Mohamed Kordofani\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nStarring: Eiman Yousif, Siran Riak, Nazar Goma, Ger Duany\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nSudanese cinema continues its resurgence with \u201cGoodbye Julia,\u201d the debut feature from Mohamed Kordofani and the first from the country to be selected for Cannes. Screening in the midst of another painful divide now happening in the capital city of Khartoum, the film jumps back to the time before Sudan was split into two countries in 2011, dramatizing another traumatic event in the country\u2019s history.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cBeing part of the first-ever official selection of a Sudanese film in Cannes is heartwarming and very promising for this new wave of cinema,\u201d Kordofani recently told\u202fScreen Daily.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nThe film follows two women from the north and south of the country respectively, one a retired singer racked with guilt for causing a man\u2019s death, another the widow of that man. The singer offers the widow \u2014 who doesn\u2019t know about the singer\u2019s involvement in her late husband\u2019s death \u2014 a job as her maid in an effort to atone for her misdeeds.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cI consider \u2018Goodbye Julia\u2019 a call for reconciliation and a spotlight on the social dynamics that led to the separation of the South,\u201d Kordofani said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n<strong>\u2018Les Meutes\u2019\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n<strong><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/sites\/default\/files\/userimages\/3915446\/les_meutes_hounds.png\"\/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\nStarring: Ayoub Elaid, Abdelatif El-Mansouri\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nDirector: Kamal Lazraq\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nMoroccan filmmaker Kamal Lazraq returns to Cannes 12 years after his short film \u201cDrari\u201d won second prize in the Cin\u00e9fondation category with \u201cLes Moutes\u201d (which translates to \u2018Hounds\u2019 in English) \u2014 a harrowing crime story set over a single night with an irresistible hook. The film follows father and son Hassan and Issam, petty criminals working for the local organized-crime syndicate in the suburbs of Casablanca. While they\u2019re carrying out a supposedly routine kidnapping, things go awry, and the two face a dilemma: either dispose of the body, or go to prison for the rest of their lives.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nThe film is the feature debut for Lazraq, who hasn\u2019t directed since his 2014 short \u201cThe Man with a Dog,\u201d which followed a man whose yellow Labrador was stolen while he was swimming who will stop at nothing to retrieve his pet.\u00a0 According to a recent conversation that Lazraq had with Bref Cin\u00e9ma magazine, \u201cLes Meutes\u201d is a \u201cspiritual sequel\u201d to that short, a deeper exploration of both desperation and the strange things that one may encounter wandering the streets of his country at night.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n<strong>\u2018The Mother of All Lies\u2019\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n<strong><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/sites\/default\/files\/userimages\/3915446\/the_mother_of_all_lies.jpeg\" width=\"1200\"\/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\nStarring: Asmae El-Moudir\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nDirector: Asmae El-Moudir\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nAnother innovative documentary, \u201cThe Mother of All Lies\u201d is the latest release from Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir. Her previous effort, 2020\u2019s feature-length doc \u201cThe Postcard,\u201d found her diving into her family\u2019s past as she journeyed to the small village in which her mother was raised. There, she attempted to personally connect to the circumstances she would have found herself growing up in had her family never left the remote locale.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cThe Mother of All Lies\u201d finds the director exploring her own childhood more directly. While her previous film took inspiration from a postcard photograph of her mother\u2019s village that she had found, this film begins with El-Moudir rediscovering a photograph she had always been told was of herself as a child, but, she finds out, is not of her at all. This propels her into an investigation of all the untruths she\u2019d been told by her family, leading to some startling revelations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nChallenging conventions has been El Moudir\u2019s intention since she began as a filmmaker more than 10 years ago. In 2012, she told the \u201cAfrican Women in Cinema\u201d blog in 2012: \u201cI work from a particular perspective, with a desire to break conventions. Indeed, to be in front of the camera is the dream of many women, but to tell stories about these characters is another pleasure, and why not do it from behind the camera? What is important for me is that I have a feeling for what I do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/2301441\/lifestyle\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DUBAI: At the latest edition of the Cannes Film Festival, the most prestigious event in world&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.0 (Yoast SEO v28.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>REVIEW: \u2018Country of Origin\u2019 is a coming of age story about the fight for sovereignty - Gulf Times | News by the minute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Gulf Times: Latest news across the GCC from UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/2301441\/lifestyle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"REVIEW: \u2018Country of Origin\u2019 is a coming of age story about the fight for sovereignty\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gulf News| UAE&#039;s Largest News aggregator site\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/2301441\/lifestyle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Gulf Times | News by the minute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/100084981843786\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-05-10T22:05:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/sites\/default\/files\/userimages\/3915446\/fourdaughters.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"gulftimes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Gulftimesuae\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Gulftimesuae\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"gulftimes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"REVIEW: \u2018Country of Origin\u2019 is a coming of age story about the fight for sovereignty - 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