The Dupes is a classic of Arab cinema that is a painful but important watch (Film review)

  

One of a number of pro-Palestinian stickers spotted 

in Hong Kong in recent months

 

The Dupes (Syria, 1972) 

- Tewfik Saleh, director and co-scriptwriter (with Ghassan Kanafani)

- Starring: Mohamed Kheir-Halouani, Abderrahman Alrahy, Bassan Lotfi Abou-Ghazala, Saleh Kholoki 

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Restored Classics program

 

Going into the screening of this (restored in 2023) classic of Arab cinema, I knew that -- as per the title of the fourth segment of 2019 Hong Kong film Memories to Choke On, Drinks To Wash Them Down -- It's Not Going to Be Fun.  And, actually, in view of what's been happening in Gaza for some six months now, The Dupes may be an even more upsetting watch in early 2024 because this 1972 film shows how much, and longer, Palestinians have been suffering than many people realize. 

 

Set in Iraq but actually shot in Syria by Egyptian director Tewfik Saleh, The Dupes had its world premiere at Tunisia's Carthage Film Festival in the same year that its co-scriptwriter, Palestinian author-politician Ghassan Fayiz Kanafan, was assassinated, in Beirut.  Kanafan also wrote Men in the Sun, the 1962 novel that The Dupes' story is adapted from.  And both the novel and the film tell the story of three Palestinian refugees seeking to travel from the refugee camps in Iraq, where they cannot find work, to Kuwait, where they hope to make the kind of money it is impossible for them to do in the refugee camps.  

 

The oldest and first of the three to be introduced in The Dupes is Abou Keïss (portrayed by Mohamed Kheir-Halouani), an illiterate farmer who went through the 1948 Nakba (ethnic cleansing of Palestinians) and still pines for the olive trees he once had in his home village.  A generation younger than him, 16-year-old Marwan (essayed by Saleh Kholoki) nonetheless feels the pressure to provide for his family -- now rather than after, as he had hoped, he had finished his schooling.  And in between the two of them in age is Assad (played by Bassan Lofti Abou-Ghazala), a young activist who has had run-ins with the authorities and thinks it would be better for him to flee before he gets arrested and thrown into jail. 

 

After each of them individually fail to agree terms with Iraqi smugglers, all three Palestinians decide to entrust their fate to Abul Al Khaizran (portrayed by Abderrahman Alrahy), a fellow Palestinian who said he would smuggle them on board a truck he would drive across the desert to Kuwait -- for a fee, but less than what the Iraqis said they charged.  (For the record, the bulk of The Dupes focuses on Palestinian individuals and their interactions with one anothers; with such as Zionists barely having any screentime.) 

 

Before they meet one another's acquaintance, Abou Keïss, Assad and Marwan are shown to have already experienced (more than) their (fair) share of deprivations and frustrations.  But while Abul Al Khaizran appears to be in a better position than the desperate trio, it turns out that he, too, has a tragic past; one that has made him actually even more embittered than his fellow Palestinians -- who, unaware of this, decide to trust him with their lives primarily because he hails from the same homeland as them.

A detached observer viewing what transpires in The Dupes will look at Abou Keïss, Assad and Marwan as easily identifiable, as per the film's title, dupes for trusting Abul Al Khaizran with their very lives.  And this especially when one beholds the old truck he drives and hears his plan, which involves hiding the desperate trio for a part of what was already a pretty dangerous journey inside its water tank -- in hellishly hot conditions, given that they would be making their trip in August (the height of summer).  

But the fact of the matter is that Abou Keïss, Assad and Marwan are pretty much in a "Damned if you do, Damned if you don't" situation and it's really a case of dying a slow or quick, extremely painful or still painful, death for all of them.  The sorry fate of Palestinians, refugees, and Palestinian refugees, it seems.  

 

At the same time, there's some hope dangled in front of our trio of protagonists -- and the fact of the matter is that sometimes, it's the hope that can kill you.  To repeat: The Dupes is not a film one goes into a screening of assuming that it'll be a fun watch.  But credit to Tewfik Salleh and co for making it engrossing, involving, cruelly tense and painfully heart-tugging -- and for making this (re)viewer want so much better for the work's (anti-)heroes, against what really are overwhelming odds.

 

My rating for the film: 8.0

Two very different documentaries viewed on the same day at the Hong Kong International Film Festival (Film reviews)

Hong Kong International Film Festival collectibles 

on display and for sale during this year's fest

 

Still Recording (Syria-Lebanon-France-Germany-Qatar, 2018)

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Documentary Competition program
- Saaed Al Batal and Ghiath Ayoub, co-directors, co-writers and co-cinematographers (the last with five others)

In 2011, two college students decided to move from Bashar al-Asaad-controlled Damascus to rebel-controlled Douma to take part in the still-ongoing Syrian Revolution.  Over the course of some four years, one of them, Saeed Al Batal, and his friends shot more than 450 hours of film footage documenting conflict, death and life in parts of the country under siege.  Mixed in too into what was ultimately edited into a 123-minute-length work were scenes shot in the Syrian capital -- in such as art studios and at a pool party -- which would normally seem commonplace but seemed rather surreal when viewed within the context of what else was shown going on in the same country at the time.

Going into a screening of Still Recording, I expected the documentary effort to be a tough watch -- and it did indeed turn out to be the case, but for different reasons than what I thought would be so.  For, yes, I was emotionally affected by the shots of people killed in the conflicts, many of them non-combatants, and their mass burials -- but I also felt physically ill after being exposed to so many real-life equivalents of "shaky cam" shots and not only had to close my eyes for extended periods during the film but also ended up downing some Ibuprofen seconds after the conclusion of its screening.

At the risk of sounding callous (not least since at least one person behind a camera lost his life over the course of the making of the work along with 13 other individuals known to the documentary's makers), I honestly thought that much of Still Recording was badly shot -- and got to wondering how terrible the discarded hours of recorded footage were in view of what passed muster to be included in the film.  In addition, the way that this guerilla documentary was put together made it so that confusion along with a sense of there having been so much tragic waste (of, but also in, people's lives) seems to be the key takeaway for a viewer like me (who was sincerely hoping for greater enlightenment about the Syrian conflict than this production provided me with).

Something else that I found out of note in Still Recording was how more socially liberal the Ba'athist-controlled parts of the country away from the main conflicts appeared to be.  Some might consider the scenes of partying young women and men in bathing suits drinking alcohol -- and having fun while parts of the country burnt -- to be decadent and indulgent.  But I have a feeling that many of these same people also would be disturbed by the religious fervor of the rebels that can be seen not only in their constant invocations of "Allah" in battle but also at other times, the more conservative clothing of their womenfolk (none of whom, more than incidentally, are shown as active participants in the conflict) and their destruction of hundreds of bottles of alcohol that one of the rebels can later be heard lamenting as a waste off camera!

My rating for this film: 4.0   

Free Solo (USA, 2018) 
Part of the HKIFF's Cinephile Paradise program
- Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, co-directors and co-producers (the latter with two others)

The Hong Kong Cultural Centre's over 1,700-capacity Grand Theatre is my favorite film viewing venue in Hong Kong; with memorable viewing experiences there including those for Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.  So it was rather disappointing to discover that I'd only be attending one HKIFF screening there this year.  Still, if I had to pick one film from this year's HKIFF viewing selection to do so on a mega-big screen with more than a thousand other appreciative audience members, then the visually astounding Free Solo really would have been it!

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin deserve credit for taking the time and effort to show the often amusing as well as interesting human side of professional rock climber Alex Honnold.  Still, there's no doubt that Free Solo soars highest when documenting the free solo enthusiast's superhuman attempt(s) to climb a 3,000 foot vertical rock formation known as El Capitan without ropes or other safety gear.   

As should be obvious, doing all this with the help of others and when using safety equipment already constitutes quite the feat.  But doing it alone with chalk being the most visible equipment besides one one's hands, arms, body, brain, legs and feet, and with the pressure of having the possibly fatal activity being recorded by a camera team composed of fellow climbing enthusiasts cum friends, surely required the kind of psychological as well as physical abilities that very few humans possess.

There's no question about it: Alex Honnold is the star of this amazing show -- with his girlfriend Sanni McCandless often not coming off that screen, to the extent that many members of the audience probably were willing for him to dump her way before the end of the film!  At the same time though, it also should be recognized that the makers of Free Solo -- notably its camera crew -- really did do a great job too.  Visually stunning, beautiful and spectacular, this deserved Academy Award-winning documentary also has a good amount of dramatic tension, with many of its most suspenseful sections causing my palms to sweat (truly!), and the very audible collective gasps of shock, surprise and relief emanating from the audience at various parts of the screening making the viewing of this film an incredibly enjoyable film fest experience. 
 
My rating for this film: 9.0

Black Code should be a "must watch" for anyone who values freedom and the internet (film review)

Canadian filmmaker Nicholas de Pencier (with an HKIFF 

interpreter by his side) at his film's Q&A session

Black Code (Canada, 2016)

- Screening as part of the HKIFF's Reality Bites program

- Nicholas de Pencier, director, scriptwriter, producer and cinematographer  

After many years of resisting the impulse to do so, I finally joined the Facebook community a few weeks ago.  In so doing, I've been witness to how people can seem willing to reveal so much about themselves via the posts they put up, share and like on that social media platform; many of which tend to be on the light-hearted side but some of which are also are seriously political in nature.

How many Facebook users, I wonder, really do realize and care that they are leaving a super detail-filled information trail out on the internet for such as various government agencies to see?  And can they envision that even seemingly innocous comments could land one in big trouble and result in one getting tortured and forced to flee one's homeland?

To be sure, the Facebook user in question who recounted his having undergone precisely that experience in the disturbingly thought-provoking Black Code is Syrian (rather than, say, American, Japanese or living in some other country whose citizenry tend to trust their government).  And it's also true that the vast majority of cases that Canadian filmmaker Nicholas de Pencier has chosen to focus on in his work are Third World ones.  

But, as the cinematographer turned documentary director sought to make clear in a Q&A session after the Hong Kong International Film Festival screening of his film that I attended: he's by no means intending to say that the Chinese, Ethiopian, Pakistani, Syrian, Brazilian and other national governments shown monitoring the moves of their citizens in his documentary are the only ones out there engaging in internet surveillance along with censorship and cyber espionage.  (Also, he pointed out, it's not like he's unaware of companies also engaging in activities that threaten free speech and privacy on the internet; instead, it's just that the subject is so vast that it's worthy of a whole different film.)

Inspired by Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace, a book by University of Toronto political science professor Ron Diebert, whose Citizen Lab has been examining government actions designed to disrupt and/or control the internet for more than a decade, Nicholas de Pencier travelled the world to chronicle diverse examples of state surveillance, political activism and citizen journalism to show how governments seek to crush political dissent but individual citizens also are seeking to fight back. 

Certain segments of his powerful documentary are disturbing and horrifying, with real deaths being shown on film and also being shown having been preceded by violent threats and other inflammatory comments against the eventual deceased posted online.  And there are points when watching Black Code that one might feel tempted to just give up on the whole internet thang and get out of cyberspace.  

Probably realizing how his often alarming work would make many thinking people feel, Nicholas de Pencier consequently also goes out of his way to not only emphasize how brave many of the people (political activists, content providers, journalists, etc.) who feature in his documentary are but, also, that there are indeed netizens out there who have managed to strike blows for free speech, freedom, justice and a whole plethora of human rights.  

Something else that Black Code makes clear is that there really are some benefits to our world being increasingly interconnected, by the internet and otherwise.  For example, Brazilian citizen journalists can better do their job using an app that previously was only popular in Japan.  And here in Hong Kong, people watching a documentary by a Canadian filmmaker can see parallels, say, not only between what the Mainland Chinese government is trying to do in Tibet and Hong Kong but also people protesting political injustice and economic inequality in Brazil and participants in -- and those who continue to be sympathetic to -- the Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement.  

My rating for this film: 8.5