MENAR Film Festival

The Middle East & North Africa Region (MENAR) Film Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria, kicks off on January 14 and runs through the end of the month. The focus this year is on female directors - the films to be shown include Egyptian Nadine Khan's Chaos, Disorder (2012),  Tunisian Kaouther Ben Hania's The Blade of Tunis …

The “New” Cinema of Palestine

Recent Palestinian films such as Suha Arraf's Villa Touma and Najwa Najjar's Eyes of A Thief have been described as "new," offering "unique" perspectives on Palestinian life. Daoud Kuttab for example, writing in Al Monitor, places Najjar's film within a cadre of filmmakers, some new, others well-established, who are "trying to show the complexity of …

Four Arab Films at TIFF

Saibal Chatterjee at The Gulf Today writes about the four Arab films screened at the 39th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF),  Palestinian Suha Arraf’s Villa Touma on four Christian women in Ramallah, Jordanian Naji Abu Nowar’s "Bedouin Western" Theeb (Wolf), Lebanese Ghassan Salhab’s drama of amnesia and hostage-taking, The Valley, and Iraqi-Moroccan Tala Hadid’s "psychologically …