RSIFF: Competing against the best

I wrote about Insha’Allah, a Boy in the last instalment. Now I shall talk about the other competition films I have seen.

BEHIND THE MOUNTAINS

A meta-physical film that starts with a man entering the office where he works, and smashing the furniture. He then jumps out of the window, and behold! He survives the fall. The man is Rafik, is a desperate man. He is now convinced he can fly, and is determined, in the face of his family scepticism, to prove to his young son Yassine, who lives with his separated wife, that his vision is real. Taking the boy out of school, and heading to the mountains, where he finds temporary refuge by invading a bourgeois family’s country house, Rafik is clearly mentally unwell. Whether he can fly or not remains an open end.

Renowned Tunisian Director Mohamed Ben Attia made an impact with his very first film Hedi, that was selected in the official Competition of the Berlin Film Festival, and won the prize of Best Actor for Majed Mastoura, the main actor of Behind the Mountains. His second feature My Son, premièred at the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors Fortnight, and Behind the Mountain premièred at Venice Film Festival. 92 minutes long, the film shows what an imaginative, albeit irrational mind can do with the medium of film. For sheer bravery in this area and the great photography, the film was in the running.

    Mohamed Ben Attia                                                                           

Majd Mastoura

NORAH: Missed

HIDING SADDAM HUSSEIN

Eighteen years ago, the invading US forces were searching Iraq for its deposed president, Saddam Hussein, who had seemingly disappeared into thin air. He was finally discovered in the town of Al-Dawr, living in a bunker his chauffeur and bodyguard, dug between the date trees in his orchard. Alaa Namiq, now 50, hid Saddam for a staggering 235 days, before the Americans tracked him down in 2003, executing him three years later. Halkawt Mustafa (Iraq) persuaded Namiq to tell his story for the first time, in this startling documentary, which took 10 years to make and was necessarily shrouded in so much secrecy that even the crew did not know the real subject of the film they were making.

Halkawat Moustafa is a Kurdish film-maker, known for his feature fiction, El Classico, where he tells the story of Kurdish children, following their dreams. In his feature docu-feature, Hiding Saddam Hussein, Halkwat has created distinguishable work with this docu-fiction, with story-telling from events that we followed all over the news, which he has transformed into its daily life. It is a documentary that uses suspense in a very remarkable way. 96 minutes in length.

Very realistic, and a true labour of love. Makes no sensational, formulaic compromises, and tight-rope walks the political context successfully. Another film that could covet the Best Film Award.

Halkawat Moustafa                              

Alaa Namiq/Namiq JasimAl Doosri

BACKSTAGE 

A modern dance company, Without Borders, is concluding a Moroccan tour, with a final performance in Marrakech. During the penultimate show in the House of Culture of a village in the Atlas Mountains, Aida provokes Hedi, her life and stage partner who injures her in front of the horrified eyes of the other members of the troupe. The show ends a few minutes later and Aida leaves the stage with a limp, followed by the other dancers. They have to leave in a hurry to seek urgent medical attention and take to the road to the next village to see the only doctor available in the area, in hopes to heal Aida and save the last show that proves to be the most important.

By the light of the full moon, the company goes on an unexpected detour to ensure that the all-important final performance goes ahead. On the way, a monkey crosses the road and the bus goes into a skid and miraculously stops by the lower side of the road! Without a spare tire, now the troupe is stuck in the middle of the forest. Outside, the full moon brightens over a majestic, yet worrying landscape.

A breath-taking ballet/free dance opens the film and lasts a long time. After that, the film becomes a pretentious road film, with just few twists, and not all of them convincing. It is a downward slide. A Tunisia-Morocco co-production, it is 102 minutes long.

Backstage has an important multi-talented cast:

Sondos Belhassen is a Tunisian actress, dancer and choreographer, who has made more than 12 feature films with well-known filmmakers like Nouri Bouzid. She has also participated in the Oscar-winning film “The English Patient”.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is a renowned Belgian choreographer with Moroccan origins. Cherkaoui is now in Europe among the most well-known choreographers. 

               Sandos Belhausen                                     Sofiane Ouissi

                Nassim Baddag            

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

                                                                                                Hajiba Fahmy

Sofiane Ouissi started his career with his sister Salma, and both are known for being dancers and curators from Tunisia.

Hajiba Fahmy is a French dancer known to work with Beyonce who also participated in Dancing with The Stars, France.

                Abdallah Badis

                                                                                                        Salima Abdelwahab

Khalil Benkirane

Former director of the Arab Film Festival, Cinemayaat, in San Francisco from 1998 to 2002, he has curated Arab films for a range of institutions and has collaborated with various cinémathèques. He produced and directed his first feature documentary, The White Thread, in 2006 and ran the documentary section of the Casablanca International Film Festival in 2007. Khalil moved to Doha, Qatar in early 2008 to produce films for Al Jazeera Children’s Channel until the end of 2010 and currently heads the grant unit of the Film Financing Department at the Doha Film Institute.

Abdallah Badis is a director, scenarist and Franco-Algerian actor

Salima Abdelwahab is a renowned Moroccan stylist. 

Producer Khalil Benkirane:

-Siraj Syed