Dubai Film Festival endorsed films head to Toronto

Dubai/Toronto: The Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) announced that two works by Arab filmmakers, endorsed by Dubai Film Connection, will be shown at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), running from September 6th – 16th, 2012. 

The films screening at TIFF were selected and presented at the Dubai Film Connection, the co-production market of DIFF that aims to encourage the growth of film production in the Arab world. The award-winning director Annemarie Jacir’s “When I Saw You” has been shortlisted to participate in the prestigious Contemporary World Cinema section at TIFF as has “Fidai”, a fascinating and emotive documentary by filmmaker Damien Ounouri. 

“Fostering opportunities for Arab filmmakers and supporting the development of the regional film industry are DIFF’s core aims,” said Masoud Amralla Al Ali, Artistic Director of DIFF. “We are proud that the two films were chosen by the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), one of the most prestigious cinematic events in the world, to showcase the best of Arab cinema and expose the Arab perspective of storytelling to TIFF’s audience.” 

“When I Saw You” by Annemarie Jacir, which takes place in Jordan, in 1967, tells the story of a free-spirited eleven-year-old Tarek (Mahmoud Asfa) and his mother Ghaydaa (Ruba Blal) have temporarily settled in the Harir camp in Jordan, who in the chaos they have been separated from Tarek's father Ghassan. Restless and uneasy, Tarek has trouble adjusting to the indignity of destitution and living on humanitarian handouts. Every day, he and his mother anxiously monitor the trucks unloading more and more refugees, longing to be reunited with Ghassan, but to no avail. 

Damien Ounouri’s “Fidai” by is a fascinating documentary in which Mohamed El Hadi Benadouda, a seventy-year-old veteran of the Algerian War of Independence, speaks about his years of struggle as an underground soldier for the National Liberation Front. On the fiftieth anniversary of Algeria's independence, El Hadi recounts his hardship to his great-nephew Ounouri in “Fidai”, which is both a tribute to the anonymous heroes of a war that galvanised the imaginations of colonised people worldwide, and a critical reflection on the legacy that the war imprinted on the "new" Algerian society.