April, a month marked by film festivals around the Middle East, will this year also be notable for Saudi Arabia opening its first cinema in 35 years. The American blockbuster “Black Panther” will be the first film screened, premiering in Riyadh on April 18.
Iran for Palestine: For Iranian cinephiles and the film industry, April means the Fajr International Film Festival, whose 36th edition is slated for Tehran, April 19-27. In a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinians, the festival's Broken Olive Branches section will screen films highlighting the Palestinian resistance. In addition, Gazan director Rashid Masharawi, whose films focus on the behind-the-scenes world of the resistance movement, has been invited as the festival's guest of honor, and his 2017 film, “Writing on Snow,” will be screened. The regional lineup also includes documentaries and dramas from Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Turkey and, of course, Iran.
Q&A sessions following screenings will allow viewers to engage with international guests and filmmakers in attendance to discuss their films, with some offering reflections based on firsthand encounters with the violence and heartbreak taking place in war-torn Syria. Movie fans will also have the opportunity to escape contemporary regional politics and take in the classic “Ran,” by Akira Kurosawa, films by the renowned German director Werner Herzog and Britain's Ken Loach and other productions from around the world, including from Korean and Baltic cinema.
Boycott in Istanbul: The Istanbul Film Festival, which opened April 6 and runs through April 17, is taking place amid a boycott by Palestinian artists to protest the presence of Art Israel, an Israeli Foreign Ministry-backed entity, as a sponsor. Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Turkey released a statement on its website in which it said that repeated calls had been made to the festival to drop the Israeli sponsor, but to no avail. The group chastised the Istanbul Culture and Arts Foundation, which organizes the Istanbul Biennial and other major cultural events in Turkey, for accepting Israel's sponsorship despite recent incidents in which Israeli forces have used live ammunition against Palestinians protesting on the Gaza side of the border fence, killing 31 people.
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