They offer thematic interest and often also empathy, with topics like power struggles and suffering, ideology and danger. Whether or not the story is limited to one of these subjects, filmmakers will open up a wider vision to explore the question of virtue and life’s purpose.

Such films can also serve as a mirror to society, provoking critical thinking, and inviting the audience to take a position beyond dominant media narratives and misinformation.

Last year saw several cinematic experiments responding to the Israeli war on Gaza and the West Bank as well as its expansion into Lebanon and Syria, and more recent developments in the Syrian Civil War. Fourteen years of Civil War in Syria seemed to come to an end when the Syrian regime collapsed and former president Bashar Al-Assad fled to Russia on 8 December, ending 24 years of his and more than half a century of his family’s rule. All through those years, the Syrian conflict had provided non-Syrian filmmakers with subject matter.

This year French filmmaker Jonathan Millet made Ghost Trail (the original title is Les Fantômes), which won the Golden Star Award for best feature narrative film in El Gouna Film Festival last October. The film opens with the protagonist Hamid (played by French-Tunisian actor Adam Bessa) being released into the desert along with other prisoners captured by the regime forces. After a couple of years, Hamid manages to go to France to become a member of a group tracking down Syrian regime members involved in crimes against humanity. Hamid refuses to leave Strasbourg, France for asylum in Germany, just because he has a clue that his torturer Harfaz (played by Palestinian actor Tawfeek Barhom) is staying in Strasbourg under the name Sami Hama.

The filmmaker uses the dramatic structure of a thriller to trail the protagonist on his journey in search of justice. The script introduces a human element when Hamid meets another Syrian woman, Yara (Hala Rajab), and tells her he is looking for his relative, hiding his true intentions. The script generates a friendly bond between them as they draw closer to Harfaz, now a chemical engineering postgraduate student at the same university where he is studying.

The filmmaker delves into Hamid’s trauma as he travels to Lebanon to make sure that Sami is Harfaz, and the group then votes on whether to take revenge themselves or bring him to trial – a question more relevant than ever now that the Al-Assad regime has fallen.  

Another French film that dealt with the issue of Syrian refugees is Meet the Barbarians (the original title is Les Barbares), screened in November in the International Competition of the 45th Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF). Directed and written by French actress Julie Delpy, who also stars in it, the film is about a Syrian family that, on immigrating to France, are placed in a small town called Paimpont. The film opens with a comic misunderstanding when Paimpont Mayor Sébastien Lejeune (Jean-Charles Clichet) prepares the citizens and the town council members for receiving a Ukrainian family, he even raises the flag of Ukraine on the Mayor’s office to express his support, but it turns out the newcomers are from the Middle East. The filmmaker mocks European prejudice, racism and double standards.

The film is about a Syrian family that consists of Marwan Fayad (Ziad Bakri), his wife Louna (Dalia Naous), his father Hassan Fayad (Fares Helou), his sister Alma (Rita Hayek), his son Wael (Adam) and his daughter Dina (Ninar). The drama revolves around their efforts to adapt to their new life after being forced out of their homes by the brutality of the Al-Assad regime.

The script is built on the classic paradigm of a conflict between the protagonist, Marwan, and an antagonist, the racist plumber Riou (Laurent Lafitte), who is trying as hard as he can and by any means possible to drive the family out of the town. Although the film discusses a very sensitive issue about the real tragedy of displaced people, the drama is written in a lighthearted way, humour being in the director’s view the shortest path to the audience’s mind. The film was well received during its screenings in Cairo.

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On 24 May an important cinematic event took place at the 77th edition of Cannes Film Festival when Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof walked on the red carpet raising images actors Missagh Zareh and Soheila Golestani before the premier of his new film The Seed of the Sacred Fig (which won Cannes Jury Prize). The two actors were not able to leave Iran to attend the festival, facing pressure from the courts. This wasn’t the first time that artists and filmmakers were subjected to harassment and legal accusations by the Iranian authorities. Jafar Panahi, for example, was targeted for many years.

Rasoulof was arrested more than once before, and eventually sentenced to eight years in prison, giving him no choice but to flee Iran after his appeal was declined. He sneaked out of the country through a clandestine route before he managed to settle down in his exile in Europe. His film There Is No Evil, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2020, is against capital punishment, and criticises the Iranian judicial and religious system as a whole.  

Screened at El Gouna Film Festival last October, The Seed of the Sacred Fig was shot secretly, breaking censorial rules by portraying female characters without hijab. It opens with a scientific statement about a plant called Ficus Religiosa (aka Sacred Fig) saying that this tree has an unusual life cycle; its seeds are contained in bird droppings and its branches wrap around the host tree and strangle it. The statement has no direct bearing on the drama but it may only be a symbolic reference to the protagonist who happens to be a dramatic manifestation of patriarchal authority in addition to being a member of the judicial system.

The first scene after the credits shows a close shot of the hand of a judge giving the main character, Iman (Missagh Zareh) a pistol, after recruiting him as an investigative judge. This shot gives the audience a hint of how the pistol will play a part in the drama not only as a symbol of power but also as a part in the plot. What is interesting is that the bullets may become real seeds of violence.

The filmmaker, who is also the screenwriter, explores that changes that beset the protagonist’s family – his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), elder daughter Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and his younger daughter Sana (Setareh Maleki) – after he becomes an authority figure. The plot develops during the incident that caused the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 after the brutality of the Iranian morality police against the 22-year-old Iranian woman who was announced brain dead after being taken into custody, which prompted widespread protests and a violent response.

First, Iman is shocked when he is ordered by his superiors to sign death sentences before having a chance to study the cases in question. This is immediately after he gets his new job and before the case of Amini. Even though this is against his beliefs, he tells his wife he doesn’t have a choice except to comply with what he is ordered to do. This part is the first slip of the main character, who thus becomes a tool of the authorities as he loses his conscience.

The Amini incident makes the daughters rebellious against any authority, especially after the police hit Rezvan’s friend Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi) with buckshots. This scene is the first time the mother sees the brutality of the government for herself. Rasoulof shows how the mother obeys her husband and follows him in everything.

Once scene shows Iman and Najmeh in their bedroom as they are praying where she stands behind him in the blue light of dawn. Although the image is ordinary for a religious married couple, it is an iconic image in the structure of the drama.

The film changes completely when the protagonist finds that his pistol is missing in his own home, turning from an ordinary political realist film to something that has a fantastical flavour.

First Iman asks a colleague specialised in interrogation to find out which of his family members took the pistol. When this method fails he takes his family to a remote place where he locks them up in different rooms hoping that they will tell the truth.

Rasoulof ends his film with a close shot of the hand of the father after he is buried under the rubble; his hand has a ring that is an icon of patriotic religious power, suggesting that Iranian women may well bring about the end of theocratic authority.

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After Donald Trump’s first presidential term (2016-2020), many American intellectuals believed American society had slipped into deeper polarisation, especially after the unprecedented attack on Capitol Hill in Washington in January 2021. This terrifying incident made Alex Garland wonder what would happen if this tension erupted to become a real military conflict. In his film Civil War, released in March and April, Garland offers a dystopian vision of the future.

The film opens with the US president (Nick Offerman) rehearsing what he is going to tell the public about the victory his troops are achieving. However, his facial expression and his way of arranging words seem to suggest that his statements are lies.  

At the same time a famous photojournalist, Lee (Kirsten Dunst) is in her hotel room in New York watching TV when explosions are heard in the background. Other scenes include Lee meeting the young amateur photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) while filming anti-government demonstrations.

The film is a road trip with four journalists: Lee, Joel (Wagner Moura), a reporter who is her Reuters teammate, Jessie and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), a veteran reporter at the New York Times (or what is left of it). They all decide to drive from New York to Washington DC for a last interview with the president before the North West troops take over the capital and remove him from power.

The filmmaker uses this trip to portray different aspects of American society, including armed nationalists who believe in white supremacy. The four journalists, accompanied by two ethnically Asian journalist friends, are stopped by a group of those extremists in military uniform carrying their machine guns.

They happen to be digging a mass grave for a huge number of human bodies. At this time the two Asian friends are murdered in cold blood while the others’ lives are threatened before Sammy speeds away with the car escaping from this madness. The scene is significant in that it provokes most of the American intellectuals about the future of their country in reference to the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

This film portrays the worries of many Americans, formulating it into something nightmarish, especially in the wake of Trump’s – and MAGA’s – second victory. Garland is an English novelist, screenwriter, producer and filmmaker known for his controversial sci-fi works like Ex Machina (2014) and Annihilation (2018).

Evidently filmmakers have not had time to process the Gaza genocide to respond to it, meanwhile, but we can expect they will.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 December, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly