Arab, African filmmakers increasingly focusing on genre films

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‘Creative and intellectual approach’

LOS ANGELES, Dec 9, (RTRS): 2019 has been an excellent year for films from Africa and the Middle East, with a higher presence in A-list festivals, and kudos for films such as Mati Diop’s “Atlantics”, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes.

The “new wave” of Arab and African cinema includes a small group of films that explore links with genre cinema – including fantasy, sci-fi and horror – which is related to a broader trend in literature and the contemporary arts in the Arab world that is exploring dystopias and fantasy settings.

Lamia Chraibi, a leading producer of daring films from the Middle East and North Africa region, is developing a pan-Arab genre series, “Meskoun”, with Moroccan filmmaker Hicham Lasri (“Jahilya”) as show-runner, in co-production with Mohamed Hefzy’s Film Clinic (Egypt), Georges Schoucair’s Abbout Productions (Lebanon) and Habib Attia’s Cinetelefilms (Tunisia).

Chraibi recently produced Talal Selhami’s “Achoura”, Morocco’s first fantasy film, for which Orange Studios is handling international sales. The pic won the Special Jury Prize in the 2019 Sitges Fantastic Film Festival.

Until now Chraibi has specialized in social realism films with a strong political voice, but she believes that genre codes can also be used in stories set in the Arab world, since it has a rich fabric of stories and beliefs that can be explored. She nonetheless highlights the danger of producing a fake “Orientalism” that is not rooted in local traditions.

“Meskoun” co-producer Shoucair is developing his first genre-themed feature film. This follows in the wake of his founding of the Maskoon Fantastic Film Festival in Beirut, which is positioned as the only festival in the region focusing exclusively on modern genre film, dedicated to screening horror, thriller, science-fiction, fantasy and action films from around the world.

Inked

Maskoon is a member of the Melies International Festivals Federation (MIFF). In its second edition Maskoon inked a formal partnership with Sitges Fantastic Film Festival, and the best short from Maskoon is shown in Sitges.

Inspired by this experience, Schoucair is now developing his first genre movie “Under Construction”, to be directed by Nadim Tabet, written by Tabet and Antoine Waked. In 2017, Schoucair produced Tabet’s debut feature “One of These Days”, about Lebanese youth.

The new pic, pitched as an “elevated horror film,” has been presented to several development competitions, including the Frontieres International Co-Production Market in Montreal.

In the Cairo Film Connection (CFC), a co-production platform for Arabic film projects, it won the Arabia Pictures award and the Red Sea Festival prize, which means that the project will participate in the new Saudi fest’s project market. Schoucair hopes to shoot the pic in September 2020.

“Through Maskoon’s master classes and all the foreign filmmakers attending our festival, I discovered a new world. For me, genre movies offer an interesting way to tell stories with some distance and perhaps less risk of censorship. My main idea is to do something more commercial, closer to the audience, without going too commercial.”

Schoucair considers that streaming platforms have played a key role in fostering greater circulation of African and Arab content both within the region and to the world and have also stimulated the development of new trends such as genre films.

“I think the phenomenon of the streamers and Netflix in particular is one of the reasons for the change,” commented Schoucair. “The other streamers aren’t really inventing anything new in this region. Netflix has introduced audiences to non-English language films, documentaries and genre movies from this region. They have a creative and intellectual approach, not just commercial.”

The Marrakech Film Festival’s 2nd Atlas Workshops held two panel discussions on the theme of genre cinema, which analyzed the roots of the phenomenon and its likely evolution.

“Atlantics, Between Realism and the Fantastic: Writing and Filming Absence” featured a discussion between French-Senegalese director Mati Diop and screenwriter Olivier Demangel, moderated by film critic Farah-Clementine Issifou.

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