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FuadHalwani
In 2019, Fuad earned his MA in Screenwriting from KinoEyes, an Erasmus+ joint Masters degree where he completed his graduation short film BRUXA along with his dissertation on the contemporary TV anti-hero. In the summer of 2019 Halwani took part in the Middle East Media Initiative (MEMI) at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, USA where he got the chance to take one of his ideas to the writers’ room as well as network with prominent Arab writers from the Middle East. With supported projects currently in development in Lebanon and the MENA region, Halwani is a freelance scriptwriter and alternative tourguide residing between Lisbon and Beirut.
Reviews
The Time That Remains (2009)
Resistance through silence!
"The Time that Remains" is by far one of the most well-made and powerful Arab movies (and specifically Palestinian) to date. Elia Suleiman tackles one of the most prominent issues in the Arab world with beautiful imagery, nostalgia, music, and the silent word.
I usually do not admire having a director act in his/her own film, but Elia Suleiman is his films, they are part of him and his appearance in them as the silent observer simply attacks the emotions and makes the viewer a part of his own life. "The Time that Remains" basically chronicles the life of his mother and father and their 'silent' resistance through the turmoil of the Israeli invasion of Palestine from 1948 till today.
What is so powerful about this film is that how the viewer (and especially an Arab viewer) can go through a history of conflict so smoothly with much joy and come out with a striking view of this history. Suleiman shows will all simplicity how the cause still loves, without blood, with few words, but with a lot of emotions and things to say. The choice of music (classical Arabic songs) make the viewer understand what the beauty of being an Arab is, and how this beauty is slowly fading... fading into a lack of identity.
I watched Suleiman's previous film "Divine Intervention" after watching this one and realized that we do have an Arab auteur director in our midst; his playful style and cartoonish characters all the more strengthen his cause and keep on his silent resistance.
A pure must-see!
Et maintenant on va où? (2011)
A Lebanese Lysistrata!
I've been skimming through the reviews posted about this film, and I was surprised to see that they are mostly positive reviews. I found this weird at first, especially since most of the people I discussed the film with within my circle of friends and colleagues didn't really like it. But then I thought the contrary, this is normal since essentially this kind of film is very easily likable.
When I watched the movie I felt a lot of things, it definitely did stir up a lot of emotions in me while watching; there were tears, laughs, enjoyable music, and the acting was not bad. But as the film closed I was left with a blank face... the bad blank face not the good one.
If I were to describe this film in one word, I would say that it is a collage- a pure collage of everything; styles, genres, stories, acting, music. There is everything in it, but I'm not sure if this is necessarily good. I felt at the end that Nadine Labaki had a lot to say and wanted to say them all at the same time. I do not blame her, since making cinema in this part of the world is very difficult, a filmmaker feels that he/she has a lot to say in so few ways.
But the essential problem for me in this film was the topic; the epic Christian-Muslim battle in Lebanese culture. Seriously, is this the biggest problem in Lebanon? Is this even the core of all problems? I seriously doubt that, rather I think it is the thing that the world would like to see about Lebanon; an exotic Kusturica-style village with the 'typical' Lebanese strife. For me the problem that we need to talk about is much bigger than that and goes down to the core of this whole nation's existence and the attitude of it's people. But again opinions differ as always.
And then there is Lysistrata, again another unconfessed adaptation mixed with unconfessed homages to directors, scenes, styles...
There is no doubt that Nadine Labake has surely been one of the pillars of globalizing Lebanese cinema, and that is a very good thing- the world now knows (more or less) that there is a country called Lebanon and it has tiny little filmmakers in it... but is this the Lebanon we live in? Does this struggle, this human emotion captured in "Where Do We Go Now?" echo the struggle we are living in this broken country?