By the end of the recent British Independent Film Awards, one thing was very clear: 2019 had been a stellar year for Arab cinema. For Sama took Best British Independent Film, becoming the first documentary to win the ceremony’s top prize. A harrowing but hopeful first-person account of the Syrian civil war, it not only won Best Film, but also Best Director – for co-directors Edward Watts and Waad Al-Kateab, whose story this was – as well as Best Documentary and Best Editing.
Al-Kateab shot the film hand-held across several years, partly as a message to her young daughter, Sama, who was born during the uprising in Aleppo. “I know that most of the people here haven’t seen the film … the first thing, go and watch it,” she said, as she took to the stage for the final time. After this triumph, people undoubtedly will. For Sama must now surely be considered a major contender for the Best Documentary prize at the Oscars in February.
You might say this glorious year in Arab cinema began 10 months ago, at this year’s Academy Awards, when Rami Malek won the Best Actor Oscar for his extraordinary portrayal of Queen singer Freddie Mercury in the hit biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. Malek, who was born in America to Egyptian immigrant parents, is arguably the most prominent actor with Egyptian roots since the great Omar Sharif. In April, he will be seen as the villain in new James Bond film No Time To Die.
Malek’s win came alongside two other impressive Arab film nominations. In the Best Documentary category, there was a nod for Of Fathers and Sons, an eye-opening study by filmmaker Talal Derki, as he returned to his native Syria and encountered Abu Osama, a founder of the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front, whose extremist beliefs result in him sending his two sons to terrorist training camps. While the film lost out to Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s rock climbing documentary Free Solo, the nomination was a huge achievement.
The same can be said for Lebanese director Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum. Its appearance at the Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category (following nods at the Golden Globes and the Baftas) marked the end of a remarkable journey for the movie, which began with its world premiere at Cannes last year, where it won the Jury Prize. The heartbreaking tale of a runaway child in the slums of Beirut confirmed Labaki as a storyteller of the highest order, the film a potent blend of naturalism and melodrama.
Source: Why 2019 was a successful year for Arab cinema – The National