DIRTY DIFFICULT DANGEROUS
Genre
Drama
Running time
83 minutes
Year
2021
Language
Arabic
Subtitle
English
Country
France, Italy, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Qatar
Director
Wissam Charaf
Bio
Producer
Charlotte Vincent, Katia Khazak, Pierre Sarraf
Cast
Clara Couturet, Ziad Jallad, Darina Al Joundi, Rifaat Tarabay
Scriptwriter
Wissam Charaf, Mariette Désert, Hala Dabaji
Deadpan humour may not be the first thing we associate with stories about doomed love or struggling refugees, but director Wissam Charaf’s second feature – winner of the Europa Cinemas Prize in Venice this year - is imbued with a wry sense of human absurdity. Ahmed (Ziad Jallad) fled from Syria to survive on the streets of Beirut by selling scrap metal. Mehdia (Clara Couturet) is Ethiopian, working as a housekeeper for an elderly middle-class couple who leave her in no doubt as to how expendable she is; nevertheless, she is a buoyant spirit, determined to find a better life together with Ali. Getting in the way of their love story is the legacy of an old war wound, a mysterious infestation of metal filings that Ali keeps shedding, turning him into a sickly version of the Tin Man. Funny and serious by unexpected turns, Charaf’s film is full of stylistic surprises.
This film is supported by the Red Sea Fund.
Other movies
SANTOSH
Director: Sandhya Suri
When Santosh’s husband, a policeman in a rural district in North India, is killed in a riot, the widow can only keep their home if she takes his job. Eager to succeed, she shows more determination than is usual among the misogynist male police when a low-caste girl is reported missing and then turns up dead. A charismatic senior woman officer, Inspector Sharma, is duly drafted in to head the murder investigation, becoming Santosh’s mentor. Success for women, however, generally means showing they can bend the rules as flagrantly as the men, where survival always comes at huge personal cost. A fascinating police procedural, focusing on the relationships within the force rather than crimes or culprits, the film is an investigation into deep-rooted systemic corruption.
LITTLE JAFFNA
Director: Lawrence Valin
“You’re not in Paris any more. You’re in Little Jaffna.” During the civil war in Sri Lanka that raged from 1983 until 2009, Tamils in the Parisian district of Little Jaffna were forced to contribute towards buying arms for Tamil Tigers. Aya, ostensibly a grocer, leads the ruthless extortion gang that bleeds the community dry. Michael, a straight-shooting young police officer with Tamil roots, is sent to infiltrate the organization but as he befriends the gang’s members at terrible risk to himself, he starts to see the issue in a more nuanced way and feels his loyalties shifting. Valin combines the theatricality of Tamil movies with the hard edge of new French cinema, using largely non-professional actors, in this spectacular thriller.
MONSIEUR AZNAVOUR
Director: Mehdi Idir
Charles Aznavour, the son of Armenian immigrants who became a defining voice of France, died in 2018 aged 94. Two years later, his sons, Mischa and Nicolas, announced they had been working with their father on a biopic to be released this year: Aznavour’s centenary. This stunning musical drama is an intimate portrait of the artist’s life that's packed with biographical information. Growing up in poverty gave him an unswerving determination to reach the top; by the 1940s, he was playing cabarets with Pierre Roche, but his ambition was a solo career and a mass audience. Tahir Rahim plays Aznavour in a drama punctuated with disarmingly honest anecdotes from family members, giving us both the man and, of course, his music.
