November 5 2024
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Iraqi Film Days: Creative, cinematic insights into the screenings
Israa Radaydeh, Jordan News
last updated:
Jan 30,2023
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AMMAN — The Kingdom’s first-ever
edition of the Iraqi Film Days launches today, presenting its Jordanian
audience with distinctive films exploring life, culture, politics, and society,
with a cinematic vision of Iraq.اضافة اعلان
The screenings, organized by the Royal Film Commission in collaboration with Cineiraq, include two feature films and a
collection of short films in both Arabic and Kurdish. They will be shown at Rainbow
Theater near First Circle in Amman, and admission is free of charge.
Europa (2021): Screening tonight at 7pmThis intense, direct, and poignant film chronicles the attempts of an Iraqi immigrant to enter Bulgaria via the
Balkan route while avoiding the sweeping searches of the ruthless border police.
The first few shots of Europa show a
series of posters outlining what some immigrants must do to enter the continent
of perennial longing, escaping the doubtful realities of their respective homelands.
Pay a lot of money, risk being
scammed and — if you can cross the border — face the threat of detainment or even
massacre by your not-so-welcoming hosts.
We hear the bullets whizzing by, the grunts of others fleeing — some of whom fall in the attempt — and watch as our protagonist manages to advance despite it all
The opening scene shows just that: a
group of people have reached the border between Turkey and Bulgaria. Darkness,
nerves, and last-minute pleas for extra money cut to a mad zig-zag dash, a
chase, an explosion of shooting.
Like a midnight war film, the camera
shows dizzying, desperate, and terrifying snapshots.
The protagonist is Kamal, an Iraqi
teenager who manages to escape in the midst of the chaos. As he runs, the
camera stays close to his face and his body; director Haider Rashid pushes
viewers to join that flight. We hear the bullets whizzing by, the grunts of others
fleeing — some of whom fall in the attempt — and watch as our protagonist
manages to advance despite it all, thanks to a mixture of ingenuity and luck.
The
continentSimple and effective, the film takes on
extra levels of meaning from its title. Though the piece of the story portrayed
seems to take place over a mere 24 hours, it is a slice that manages to
represent, for many, the full European experience. It is, for them, Europe. The
only Europe they know and, perhaps, the only one they will ever know.
The director provides nuance to this
experience, placing the protagonist in more and more swampy terrain, both
literally and figuratively — not only in terms of the nature of the locale or with
the border patrols, but even in encounters with the strangers the young man
meets on his wooded path.
Wounded, injured, hungry, and
exhausted, Kamal carries the marks of immigration on his body and face. As the
camera fastens on his countenance, we see his wounds, his tears, his sweat,
even his snot. Entering this continent for him means submitting to beating, brutalization,
mistreatment, and even the fears of others. A roadside scene shows the state of
paranoia that pervades Bulgarian society concerning refugees; in this case, portraying
something of European society in general.
Kurdish cinema is rich with cultural meaning, with its people united from several countries and realities — Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran.
Europa also reveals the double discourse
swirling around the continent. Although some countries have always been more
crude and direct when it comes to rejecting immigrants, the brutal reactions
shown here bring to the fore that fracture between the humanist presentation of
the continent (its solidarity speeches, its crumb subsidies) and its attitude
towards the daily reality of refugees trying to enter.
As happens in other public fora (think
the transfer of vaccines to the third world, or pandemic travel restrictions), words
are one thing, and actions are another. This, too, is the case for Europe.
Europa was Iraq’s official submission
to the 2022 Oscars Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film. It
secured awards for Best Actor and Best Director at the Red Sea International
Film Festival in 2021 and received nominations for awards at a number of other
festivals, including the Hamburg Film Festival and the Seville European Film
Festival.
The Exam (2021): Screening on Wednesday at 7pmAs young Kurdish-Iraqi Rojin prepares
for her university entrance exam, her older sister Shilan, disillusioned with
an unhappy marriage, is determined to help her pass at all costs to secure her
a more emancipated life.
However, the sisters soon find
themselves embroiled in a deep web of corruption through their desperate
efforts.
Kurdish cinema is rich with cultural
meaning, with its people united from several countries and realities — Turkey,
Iraq, Syria, Iran. For all its vibrancy, it still remains quite surreptitious
and confidential outside the festival circuits.
One of the spearheads of the Kurdish film industry is the Iraqi-Kurdish screenwriter-director-producer Shawkat Amin
Korki of The Exam, recipient of several international awards. This film is no
exception in displaying his masterful directing work, alongside the remarkable
talent of director of photography Adib Sobhani.
The single shortcoming of The Exam
would be the performance of the two main actresses, who lack some experience,
particularly against their male counterparts, including actor and director Hussein
Hassan (Narcissus Blossom, 2006; The Dark Wind, 2016), who plays Shilan's
husband.
But this weak point is overshadowed
by Korki’s finesse in writing of the roles of the men who — if they do not
show themselves in their best light — are still not portrayed in a Manichean
way. Like women, they are constantly under pressure, whether from society,
economic situations — or even their wives.
The Exam is the official Iraqi
submission to the 2023 Oscars’ Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film. It secured Best Feature Fiction Film and Best Actress at the London
Kurdish Film Festival and the UNFPA Award at the Cairo International Film
Festival. It was also awarded for Best Screenplay at the Tirana International
Film Festival in Albania.