Between brackets
Hani Mustafa wonders at the inclusion of a section in the CIFF entitled "Controversial Films"
This year the Cairo International Film Festival has reorganised itself, renaming old sections, introducing new competitions and regrouping films under new headings, one of them entitled "Controversial Films". There are only three films in the section, one of which Tanger, originally entitled Del Hel Van Tanger, a Belgian production directed by Frank Van Mechelen.
"There are no good or bad people," says Marcel, the film's lead character, as if in preparation for the tragic experience he is about to undergo. Marcel is from a large industrial city and works as a bus driver for a tourist company. The director, though, explains his anti-hero's background only late in the film.
The script moves quickly from the opening scenes to a trip that Marcel and one of his colleagues take, along with a few tourists, the company owner and his girlfriend, from Brussels to Morocco by bus. When they reach Morocco the company owner changes his plans -- his girlfriend is unwilling to make the return trip by bus -- and arranges to meet with his two employees in Paris.
It is at the Moroccan border that the film begins to develop a tragic twist. The police discover 350 kilograms of drugs on the bus and Marcel and his colleague are brought before a Moroccan court. The trial is a farce, lacking even the most basic judicial process. Marcel's family decides to press for a retrial, discovering that Marcel could be saved from a prison sentence by the payment of a bribe to the judge.
The film also goes on to portray the appalling conditions faced by prisoners in Morocco. They lack food, clothing, even bed covers, and as a consequence Marcel contracts tuberculosis.
The script weaves together two tales of wretchedness, one experienced by Marcel, the other by his wife. In prison Marcel discovers his colleague knew about the drugs all along. Following the discovery he loses all respect for his former friend and attaches himself to a Belgian prisoner called Rody, a man whose experience of the Moroccan prison system allows him to survive the deprivations therein.
Meanwhile Marcel's wife attempts to force the Belgian foreign ministry to investigate the conditions in which Belgian prisoners in Morocco are held, endeavours that result in foreigners being moved to less brutal prisons. As she undertakes her campaign we see her own dire economic circumstances, as she attempts to survive on a paltry pension, barely making ends meet with a part time job in a laundry.
The film portrays the problems she faces in trying to press government officials in Belgium to take up her husband's case, and the problems Marcel faces in dealing with Belgian consular officials in Morocco. It also paints an appallingly bleak picture of the Moroccan courts and of the inhumane conditions in which prisoners are kept. At the end of the film Marcel returns to those who defended him, but in a wheelchair, to repeat the line "there are no bad people...". The film is based on a true story, a fact mentioned just before the final credits.
Perhaps the most important film in this section is Crossing the Dust, directed by Shawkat Amin Korki. The film takes the form of a "journey" that unravels over a relatively short period of time as the main characters travel by car from one situation to the next and from one place to another.
The film starts on 9 April, 2003, the day Saddam Hussein's statue in Fardous Square in Baghdad is toppled, an event viewed from the perspective of two Kurdish soldiers who watch as an American flag is wrapped around the face of the dictator's statue.
The two soldiers, the film's main characters, dance with joy at the overthrow of Saddam, celebrating with their colleagues before they are moved to a Peshmerga military base far away from the Iraqi capital.
The director uses a documentary style to present the suffering of Iraqis during the war. The most notable of these scenes involves a middle-aged Peshmerga soldier who greets American soldiers in their Hummer as they cross the highway. The director uses some lighter scenes, such as that of a child filling the American soldiers' car with gas, letting some of it to spill, causing the soldiers to cheer and the boy's father to slap him, to leaven the documentary dough. Perhaps so many scenes of American soldiers being greeted by Iraqis was the reason the film ended in the controversial section, though there is also a sequence in which the Peshmerga flag dominates the screen which also suggests the film might have a secessionist bent.
It seems at first that the main line of drama in the film will be light but it soon turns into a black comedy. The two soldiers meet a boy who is crying. The older soldier asks him what his name is and when the boy replies Saddam the soldier beats him, his name alone making him the object of revenge. They do, though, take the boy with them.
As the soldiers continue their journey their car and food supplies are stolen, and then the younger soldier is shot dead by Baathist insurgents. By the end of the film the older soldier has come to feel that he is the child's main carer.
Saddam's parents, meanwhile, are searching for their son but though they seem to travel in a parallel line to the soldiers their paths never cross despite the fact that, half way through the film, the younger soldier decides that he will try and track down the boy's parents. His attempts to do so, however, are hindered by his poor Arabic.
The director adopts the visual style common to many Iranian films, though he also utilizes more traditional flashbacks to explain just why the Kurds despised the Baathist regime.
Quite why the festival administration decided to place these films in inverted commas -- for what else is a section entitled Controversial Films other than an attempt to quarantine them between brackets? -- is not that easy to understand. The films might have presented difficult subjects, but they are topics worthy of discussion. The section also excluded many more films that are bolder in their treatment of particular issues even if while being hostile towards Arabs.
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