Locarno Film Festival artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro has come to Saudi Arabia for the first time to serve on the jury panel for the works-in-progress showcase at the Red Sea Film Festival’s ind…
’s industry section, the Red Sea Souk. A former head of the Venice Critics’ Week, Nazzaro has been tracking Arabic cinema for a while and programming pics that are breaking its mold. He spoke toMy impression is that Arab directors these days are less beholden to an auteur vision of cinema. Do you agree?
This is something that has been going on for quite some time. The fact is there has been a great change of paradigm within cinema from the Arab world and from the MENA region at large. This is largely because institutions such as the Doha Film Institute have had the lucidity and the smarts to put a lot of intriguing new talents on the map. One name that’s representative of this is Ala Eddine Slim , who is from Tunisia.
What I see now as the main challenge for directors in the region is that there is clearly a tangible need to express themselves in a way that does not compel them to deal only and always with “issues.”It needs to be stressed that those boundaries are not necessarily always set by Arab countries themselves, but sometimes also by European expectations of what an Arab film should be, which can be very limiting.
I think that if commissioning editors and people in the Arabic film funds are wise enough to support this new generation of filmmakers we will have a lot of great surprises. Just think of [Tunisian serial killer drama] “Black Medusa,” directed by Youssef Chebbi and Ismaël. It’s a tiny genre film, but if you see what’s going on in “Black Medusa” it’s already telling you the story of the [current] Iranian revolt.
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