Five films by Arab filmmakers have been selected across categories this year’s Venice Film Festival.
Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy leads the group with Woman Unknown, which will compete for the Golden Lion. She is the only woman among the directors of the 20 films in the main competition.
El-Toukhy was born in Copenhagen to a Danish mother and Egyptian father. Her previous films include Long Story Short and Queen of Hearts, which won the Audience Award in the World Cinema Dramatic section at Sundance in 2019.
Woman Unknown is set in Denmark after the Second World War. It follows Marie, a housemaid preparing to marry her wealthy employer while hiding a former relationship with a German soldier. The film is a Danish, Swedish and Latvian production.
Palestinian cinema is represented by Ahmed Hassouna’s Citizen Osama and Muayad Alayan’s Conversation With the Sea.
Citizen Osama will be screened out of competition. The France-Palestine documentary follows a former artistic photographer who has become a war documentarian in northern Gaza, where he records the devastation around him while trying to protect his wife and newborn child.
Alayan’s Conversation With the Sea has been selected for the Venezia Spotlight section.
Set in Jerusalem, it follows Kamal, a 60-year-old Palestinian man ordered by an Israeli court to pay a social security debt attributed to his son, who is believed to have drowned in the Red Sea decades earlier. When no official record of his death can be found, Kamal begins searching for answers about what happened to him.
Lebanese filmmaker Rami Kodeih will also appear in Venezia Spotlight with Furies. Set during Lebanon’s banking crisis, the film follows two women who plan an overnight robbery to recover their own savings and pay for life-saving surgery.
Lebanese-Moroccan filmmaker Shaden Safieddine Tazi will also debut the short documentary A Few Moments of Happiness.
The France-UK production follows a young Lebanese filmmaker in Paris watching the war in Lebanon unfold through her phone. It combines screen recordings, family voices and periods of silence as she witnesses the destruction of her homeland from abroad.
The 18-minute film will have its world premiere in the Orizzonti short-film competition, where it is among 13 titles competing for the section’s best short film award.
Last year's Silver Lion winner, Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, will be among the jury member's at this year's festival.
The UAE is also connected to two feature films in the programme. Halkawt Mustafa’s No Paradise If You Are Killed by a Woman will screen out of competition. The Norway, Iraq, UAE and Sweden co-production follows Vyan, a Kurdish sniper who returns to Mosul after learning that her younger sister, believed lost during the ISIS assault in 2014, may still be alive.
UAE involvement extends to the main competition through Casey Affleck’s Company, which is co-produced by Abu Dhabi’s Image Nation Studios.
The gothic mystery is listed as a Canada, Romania, Italy, US and UAE production. It unfolds across three timelines and stars Nick Nolte, Ben Mendelsohn, Scoot McNairy and Adelaide Clemens.
Iranian filmmakers also feature across the line-up. Ali Asgari will compete for the Golden Lion with A Bit of Light, while Mohsen Gharaei’s Falling House has been selected for Orizzonti. Iranian-born animator Amir Houshang Moein will compete in the Orizzonti short-film section with the French production Distant Blue.
The 83rd Venice Film Festival will run from September 2 to 12.
