A few days into the activities of El Gouna Film Festival (GFF), most of the films on my watch list haven’t yet been screened, but happily I saw the Palestinian film Ma Baad (Upshot), a 33-minute short film written and directed by Maha Haj. This simple yet touching piece with a tight screenplay and a brilliant twist left the entire auditorium in tears.

It starts with a wide shot of a small house in a farm with a little window where the lights are on. The words “Sometime in the future” appear on the screen.

This is the farmhouse of an elderly couple, Suleiman (Mohamed Bakri) and Lubna (Areen Omari), seemingly living in peace with Lubna feeding the chickens and collecting eggs before they are seen having lunch in a cosy corner, repeatedly talk about their sons Khaled, Tarek, Hamza and Bassel and their daughter Umaya. They quarrel about their future.

Lubna yearns for her daughter to be married and Suleiman is against the plan, telling his wife he wants her to complete her PhD and travel the world; marriage isn’t necessary. It is then he informs her that he loves Umaya the most, then she smiles and says that she knows, the whole family knows.

In another conversation over tea, they talk about Bassel and his love of drawing, arguing about that too, and Suleiman suggests he should come to live with them and he can build him a little house on the grounds.

These endless conversations are repeated constantly, with the couple discussing Khaled’s son, who was ill again, so much so that Khaled and his wife couldn’t sleep a wink the other night. Lubna describes how after her disagreement with Khaled, Khaled’s wife returned to the house just for their son and how she never cares for Khaled any more, and Suleiman blames her for always taking Khaled’s side.

One time, the couple are out on the farm collecting wood and helping each other to carry it when they are surprised by a visitor. Khalil Haj (Amer Hlehel) introduces himself as a journalist coming to do a reportage about the old couple, explaining he couldn’t reach them except by coming over. He mentions that he was with their son Khaled at school and he has been searching for them for a long time.

After the screening of a short film programme, there was a meeting with the filmmakers though Maha Haj was unable to attend. “The film was written before the 7 October genocidal war on Gaza,” the producer said. “Haj wrote it in May 2023, but they started shooting after 7 October and so sometimes they had to stop shooting and resume when it was possible.”

The film won the Golden Pardino-Leopards of Tomorrow (Auteur Competition) Award at Locarno Film Festival.

***

One of the events of CineGouna was a conversation with Palestinian-Dutch filmmaker Hany Abu Assad. At the beginning Abu Assad expressed his happiness to share his experience with the audience: “A person can only achieve success if he’s in a community with equal rights which currently is not present.” He assured those present that, as an Arab and Palestinian, he stands against this project by utilising all his talents to defend the Arab world.

In the same context, Abu Assad confirmed that despite migrating to Europe at age 18, he remains connected to all segments of Palestinian society. His experience abroad helped him realise that the moment one abandons one’s principles is the moment of defeat.

He told the story of why and how he changed careers, having been an engineer, becoming a filmmaker. He said that when he was young he fell in love with a woman and thought the way to make her love him back might be fame, so he decided to start a career in filmmaking. But she never loved him back, she just bragged to her friends about the fact that the famous filmmaker was in love with her, unrequitedly.

Regarding the challenges of filmmaking in the Arab world, Abu Assad said: “Most Arab film funding comes with conditions, and all important topics face censorship. But discussing such issues enriches society.” Abu Assad added that filmmakers are currently confused because the dominant system forces them to compromise their principles. He dreams of establishing an organisation for Arab filmmakers, like a “BRICS” for cinema.

Hany Abu Assad concluded this discussion by calling on filmmakers to be optimistic: “I’m optimistic about the future because there are many talents capable of meaningfully engaging their world and the outside world.” He stressed the importance of not abandoning principles to follow the dominant forces in film, and affirmed that the path to international success begins with local success: filmmakers must accept failure without assuming a victim’s role, as this is part of the road to success.

***

Discussing another touching issue, the Syrian question, is the film Ghost Trail, screened in the Official Competition Section. Originally titled Les Fantômes, this is Jonathan Millet’s debut feature film, and it depicts the pursuit of justice through a tense manhunt. The film opens with a blacked out screen paired with indistinct noises that, within a few seconds, turn out to be voice of frightened humans in a crammed truck being transported to the middle of nowhere in the desert, and as they disperse you can see they’re bruised and tired. Some of them fall dead a few seconds into arrival. Credits explain that this is the Saidnaya region of Syria in March 2015, and these captives of the Syrian army are being left there to die.

After the avant-titre, two years have passed as we encounter Hamid (Adam Bessa), who has somehow survived and ended up in Strasbourg, France, even though his papers are being processed for asylum in Germany, the viewer can’t yet know the purpose of his insistence on not leaving Strasbourg. As the events unravel, Hamid starts to approach refugee camps asking for someone he claims is his cousin, but due to the complicated situation, everybody is afraid and suspicious, unwilling to give information. As a former literature professor in Aleppo, Hamid starts to assure the Syrian refugees that he’s not a spy and doesn’t pose a threat to them.

In that scene in the Syrian refugee camp, it was obvious how Hamid was struggling to emerge from his shock back into real life and that was well portrayed in the scene when Yara (Hala Rajab), a young Syrian woman he meets, asks him to come back and see her and Hamid, confused, asks why.

There were exciting online meetings over a video game with others where Hamid’s avatar, among others, is running through the rubble of a city with guns and they are having their online meeting during this violent virtual game with his fellow Syrian refugees aiming to locate the man he is asking about.

Till then, the screenplay co-written by Millet with Florence Rochat and Sara Wikler has not yet revealed the real deal behind Hamid, who is very self-involved and cold even with his mother, who is alone in a refugee camp in Beirut, when he communicates with her on a weekly basis via video calls, claiming that he is safely pursuing his studies in Berlin.

Apparently, Hamid is a member of a self-organised network that tracks down Syrian war criminals, and he’s on the trail of Harfaz (played brilliantly by Tawfeek Barhom), the man responsible for his torture sessions during his imprisonment in Syria, whose face he has never actually seen since he was always masked when he tortured him. Just when he was released from prison he found out the war had left his wife and child dead. And as Hamid has a lead that Harfaz is in Strasbourg, he has not yet left to join the rest of his network in Germany.

By following some leads, Hamid believes that his tormentor goes by Sami Hamma, a chemistry postgraduate at the university. And so he is constantly present on campus observing him. At one point he calls his female friend saying he can sense that this is his man: he is the same height and has the same smell, which he can remember vividly. The film was nominated for the Golden Camera Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

***

Over the first three days of the festival, there were events including a conversation with Egyptian actor Mahmoud Hemeida and the opening of a unique exhibition celebrating Egyptian cinema hosted by Cairo Design District (CDD) as well as a concert by the Emmy-nominated Egyptian composer Hesham Nazih. Another highlight was the screening of the award-winning film The Brink of Dreams, directed by the Egyptian couple Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir, which saw a nearly full house. The film received the Golden Eye Award at the Critics’ Week at Cannes Film Festival and was well received during its MENA premiere at the GFF.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 31 October, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly