Middle Eastern films showcased at BFI Southbank

The BFI opens a new season, showcasing exciting and daring film-maker talent from the Middle East.

The Time is New: Selections from Contemporary Arab Cinema will run at BFI Southbank until October 5.

The season presents films made from 2019-2021 that challenge the stereotypical, weave personal narratives into broader questions and show the lyricism, humanity and poetry of everyday Arab life.

It is programmed by Youssef Shazli and Alia Ayman, co-founders of Cairo-based Zawya – Egypt’s leading arthouse cinema and distributor.

Across fiction, documentary, shorts and genre-defying films, The Time is New will bring emerging and important Arab film-maker voices to the UK, including a number of female directors.

One of these is Egyptian Ayten Amin, whose award-winning second feature Souad, will launch the season tonight.

The movie offers an engrossing portrait of Middle Eastern Generation Z and conflicting identities in Ayten Amin’s examination of modern Egypt.

Around her family, Souad is a dutiful daughter and responsible student, but when alone she unleashes her digital alter-egos, firing off flirtatious messages and suggestive pictures late into the night, obsessively awaiting responses from her social-influencer boyfriend Ahmed.

The film looks at conflicting identities and the devastating power of social media and was selected for Cannes 2020 and the Berlin and Tribeca film festivals this year.

An Oscar-nominated film, The Man Who Sold His Skin, about a Syrian refugee in Lebanon who allows his back to become a canvas for a famous tattoo artist, will also be shown.

A screening of You Will Die At Twenty on September 23 will be followed by a pre-recorded Q&A with the director Amjad Abu Alala.

The film follows the story of a young man haunted by a prophecy that his life will end as soon as he turns 20.

The theme of cinema itself plays a role in the season, with stories including an intimate and personal exploration of Egyptian film-maker Youssef Chahine and her family in Let’s Talk.

A screening on September 13 will include a pre-recorded Q&A with director Marianne Khoury.

Talking About Trees is a documentary following Sudanese film-makers as they attempt to take over a run-down cinema and revive their beloved Sundanese film club.

There is also the return of long absent director Elia Suleiman with It Must Be Heaven, starring himself as a silent protagonist who leaves Palestine to visit Paris and New York to find producers for his next film.

The season will also host a number of shorter films.

The Narrative Encounters: Shorts Programme highlights the work of a diverse group of film-makers at different stages in their careers, who all have a singular approach to questions that are at once political, intimate and formal.

From the humorous to the somewhat tragic, these films offer a glimpse into the distinct cinematic preoccupations of some of the most promising voices in Arab cinema today.

Films included in the programme are The Trap, I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face, Aziza, The Bath, Drought and Maradona’s Legs.

Tickets on sale now at bfi.org.uk/whatson

Pic: A scene from Souad