Along with the various Arab film fests that sprang across Europe, the United States, Latin America and Australia over the past decade, Arab films have become a major fixture in dozens of film festivals all over the world. They carry a particular exoticism of a cinema fraught with political, social and economic instability. The recent success of Hany Abu-Assad’s “Omar” and Jehane Noujaim’s “The Square” at the last Academy Awards boosted the reputation of Arab films, while the huge revenues Haifaa al-Mansour’s “Wadjda” — one of the highest grossing foreign films of 2012 — proved their largely overlooked commercial potential … or that’s what Arab observers presumed.
At the end of every year, critics tend to get overexcited about the small crop of Arab films that made noise internationally; 2012 was a breakthrough year, mainly for those three aforementioned movies. But a look at the Arab representation at this year’s Cannes International Film Festival reveals a starker reality Arab filmmakers and producers must confront.
