Current events have generated remarkable political momentum in cinema over the last few years. Since last year the political situation in the Middle East has imposed itself on many Egyptian events, with the genocide in Gaza, the war in the West Bank, southern Lebanon and Beirut resulting in the 45th Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF, 13-22 November) being dedicated to Palestine.

At the opening ceremony the Palestinian keffiyeh was in the background of the stage during a dabke performance by a Palestinian dance troupe called Watan (Home) from Gaza. CIFF president Hussein Fahmy said in his speech: “Over the years, the Palestinian cause has been and continues to be Egypt’s cause, because it represents justice and dignity. From my place here, I express my solidarity with our brothers in Palestine, and we will not forget our brothers in Lebanon.” CIFF screened many Palestinian films in its different sections, including the opening film, Ahlam Aabera (Passing Dreams), directed by Rashid Masharawi.   

Masharawi is widely seen as one of the most prominent Palestinian filmmakers. His debut feature, Hatta Ishaar Akhar (Curfew), released in 1994, won both the Best Film and the Critics’ Award at the Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival. Since then, neo-realism has been his chosen approach to telling human stories, with a focus on the Palestinian cause as his central theme. Masharawi has dedicated his entire body of work to portraying the suffering of his people under Israeli occupation, and the present film is no exception. It follows Sami (Adel Abu Ayyash), a Palestinian teenager who lives with his mother in the Qalandiya refugee camp in the West Bank, north of Jerusalem. Masharawi, who is also the screenwriter, doesn’t take much time to draw the audience into the heart of the conflict.

In the opening scene, after the credits, Sami wakes up and talks to his mother about the issue that has been bothering him lately: his favourite pigeon, which left three days ago. The mother advises him to be patient. The pigeon was a gift from his uncle Kamal (Ashraf Barhoum), who lives with his daughter in Bethlehem. The pre-credit scene shows Kamal in a workshop, supervising craftsmen sculpting wooden statues of Jesus on the cross and other souvenirs for the tourists who come to the birthplace of Jesus. Sami heard from the barber that pigeons usually return to their first owner, so he believes he may find it at his uncle’s house.

The film turns into a road movie first from Qalandiya to Bethlehem showing part of the Apartheid Wall which aggressively breaks up the Palestinian territories and separates them from one another. Remarkably Masharawi doesn’t directly mention any kind of the usual Palestinian suffering in the first half of the film. Sami takes a microbus to Bethlehem on his own after his closest friend refuses to accompany him.  When he meets with his uncle he finds out the pigeon had been owned by his uncle’s partner who took it from a shop owner in Jerusalem called Albert.

The camera follows Sami, his uncle Kamal and his cousin Mariam (Emilia Massou) as she insists on accompanying them on their way to Jerusalem. They take the workshop car to drop off some statues at Albert’s and to retrieve the pigeon. Once again, Masharawi uses simple situations on the way to Jerusalem to depict glimpses of the abnormal life that Palestinians face every day. The filmmaker waits till the protagonists reach Jerusalem to directly mention the Palestinian cause in a dialogue between Kamal and an old friend, a shop owner. He tells Kamal that settlers were able to obtain a court order to expel him from his family’s shop. It’s as if Masharawi wants the audience to feel that this holy city is at the heart of the Palestinian issue, and the core of this conflict is that the settlers are stealing people’s land with the support of the Israeli legal system and army.

The drama continues as they discover that Albert took the pigeon from Om Walid, who lives in Haifa. This part of the journey is also very simple in its narrative, yet it serves as another significant symbol of the political situation. It shows how the occupation managed to displace the indigenous population and replace it with immigrants from Europe, particularly Russia. When the protagonists reach Om Walid’s house, they find it is now occupied by a Russian couple.

The plot of the film was not entirely well crafted and the development of the drama felt artificial. Masharawi tries hard to abandon the usual political directness of his previous films and approach new fields of simplicity, aiming to use the simple story of a road trip to highlight the violations committed by the occupation. The pigeon is not a symbol of peace; rather, it is a tool the director uses to expose the ugly face of the occupation without resorting to violence.

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Most countries in eastern European faced a negative experience with a kind of a totalitarian regime during the second half of the 20th century, and one of the most aggressive was the Romanian communist regime led by Nicolae Ceaușescu’s (from 1974 to 1989). His regime adopted notorious and oppressive tactics, maintaining strict control over the reins of state. It was obvious that the situation escalated during his presidential terms, and in December 1989 Romania saw massive demonstrations ending with the capture of Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena, while they were trying to escape, followed by their trial and execution on 25 December, 1989.

In his debut feature narrative, Bogdan Muresanu tries to highlight the last few nights in the dictatorial presidency of Ceausescu. The filmmaker weaves his story using several lines of drama. Each storyline depicts part of life in Bucharest and sometimes it intersects with another line. One of these lines is about a secret police officer, Ionut (Iulian Postelnicu), who seems very harsh while doing his work in interrogation. This line has a very emotional and dramatic detail: that Ionut’s mother Margareta (Emilia Dobrin) suffers from loneliness, especially since she is forced to exit her house to live in an apartment because the house and most of the neighbourhood is going to be demolished. When she leaves the house she can’t bear her new home and she returns to her house at night.

The chief who is handling the workers packing some of Margaret’s furniture and belongings has his own storyline as well. As he returns to his home to find out that his son, who is eight or 10, sent a letter to Santa asking him for the death of Uncle Nick (Ceaușescu). This caused him to enter a phase of panic and anger at the same time: panic about the consequences of his son’s letter when it reaches the authorities’ hands and anger that he has put the whole family in jeopardy.

Another line is the young man, Laurentiu (Andrei Miercure), who at the beginning of the film seemed to be a happy man partying with his friends and enjoying playing music, but when he returns home in the morning we find out he is planning on illegally crossing the border with a friend. In another yet line of drama, Muresanu employs a kind of black comedy, with a TV director being reprimanded with his colleagues at the National Television by a man from a higher authority for using an actress who was recently a guest in an opposition radio channel in the official Christmas congratulation to the public. The conflict here is how they can remake the scene with another actress a few days before the actual time. The theatre actress who will be the replacement suffers from depression and hates the president as well since she was a child.

Each one of these lines of drama reaches its peak exactly before the escalation day when the demonstrations erupt leading to the end of Ceaușescu and his regime. Margret decides to end her life inside her house but she fails. Laurentiu is tortured during interrogation by the border forces after being arrested. The theatre actress can’t continue with the shooting of the Christmas scene. Nearly everything planned does not succeed, the only thing success being the overthrow of the dictatorship.

The New Year that never came has lots of detailed artistic beauty. Firstly, the costume design and accessories are carefully chosen to capture the sole of the 1980s. The filmmaker and the DOP use continuous camera movement, mainly hand camera. This style gives the audience two different feelings: one is the feeling of irritation and tension and the other is an artificial feeling of surveillance that adds to the general atmosphere of secret police. The film premiered last September at the Venice Film Festival in the Orizzonti (Horizons) Competition winning the best film award, a Special Mention for Cinematography and the FIPRESCI Prize, and is now screened in CIFF International Competition.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 21 November, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the title: War’s long shadow