New dawn for Arab cinema

Shiny 4x4s purr along the broad highways of Dubai, shimmering like mirages in the desert sun. The pattern of cranes, scaffolding and sleek high-rises etched across the skyline changes on virtually a daily basis. The whole country, with its air of impermanence and opulent fantasy, seems like nothing so much as a vast studio-set. Now, fittingly, it has an international film festival.

In its second year, this shindig is extravagantly funded. The organisers are tight-lipped about the exact figures, but local insiders guess at a budget of well over $5m (£2.8m), and it is probably nearer twice that figure. But there's more to the event than conspicuous consumption. Famed more for commerce than art, Dubai is transforming. There is the giant new Dubailand media complex, the new television satellite network, and, as of last month, plans for a new opera house and two new museums on the orders of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the country's crown prince.

One of the aims, of the film festival in particular, is to provide a platform for Arab voices. The initiative could hardly be more timely. Four years after September 11, Hollywood is finally facing up to the impact of that fateful day, and its effect on relations with the Arab world. A wave of upcoming productions includes Flight 93, about the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania that day, and a project directed by Oliver Stone and starring Nicolas Cage about police officers trapped under the rubble of the World Trade Center. There are tales of people who lost their families, and an adaptation of 102 Minutes, a book recreating the moments between the first plane's crash and the second tower's collapse.

The vast majority of these projects unfold from a strictly American perspective. But some purport to explore the Islamic point of view. Brian Grazer, who is producing an NBC miniseries based on the September 11 commission's report, says he aims to "humanise" Muslims and reach "an understanding from each culture's point of view". Opening here later this month, Steven Spielberg's Munich, ostensibly about the 1972 Olympics massacre, is an effort to question the cycle of violence leading up to September 11; it has been attacked in the States for its alleged anti-Israeli stance. And Albert Brooks's Looking For Comedy In The Muslim World, which premiered in Dubai last month, is a mockumentary about Brooks's mission to India and Pakistan to find out what makes Muslims laugh.

Arab film-makers speak of the aftermath of September 11, and the situation in the Middle East, with very different voices. Brooks's movie assumes, somewhat patronisingly, that audiences will find inherently hilarious the combination of the two words "Muslim" and "comedy". Yet many films screened in Dubai suggest that, despite the problems facing the region, humour is in plentiful supply.

A comedy about a modern dance troupe that outrages traditionalists, The Bus topped charts in Lebanon. Its colourful musical packaging conceals themes of how to heal the wounds of war and rediscover national unity. A big hit in its native Egypt, The Embassy in the Building wrings laughs from the story of a Cairo man dismayed to discover that the Israeli embassy has rented the flat next to his.

There are even moments of dark humour in Paradise Now, the festival's opening-night film and the current standard-bearer of the new Arab cinema: acquired for US and UK distribution by Warner Brothers International, it opens here this spring. Tracing 24 hours in the lives of two Palestinian suicide-bombers, it shows the terrorists recording a farewell video - then having to do it again, and again, when the camera breaks down. One of them takes the last-minute opportunity to tell his family where they can buy cheap water-filters.

Shot at great personal risk on the West Bank, the film met opposition from several militant Palestine factions. They were won over, partly thanks to the intervention of Palestine's late prime minister Yasser Arafat. According to the director, Hany Abu-Assad, word came from Arafat's office that, "regardless of what this film is about, even if it as critical as we fear it will be, it is uncivilised to prevent any kind of film-making in our area. We are trying to be a country where films can be made."

Abu-Assad's career has taken off: courted by Los Angeles, he, too, is now making a full-blown comedy about the Arab dream in the US. Others have been less fortunate. Mahmoud Kaabour's Being Osama is a documentary about six men of very different personalities and varying Middle Eastern origins with two things in common: they all now live in Canada and are all named Osama. In the film, they talk about "the man who stole their name" and his impact on the way they're treated by their fellow-Canadians.

Kaabour says that "every single Osama was reluctant to participate," and, it seems, with good reason. One, who runs a Muslim school in Montreal, has been investigated by intelligence agents since appearing in the film.

Born in Lebanon, Kaabour had been living in Canada for over six years, with an immigration visa pending. When he wanted to travel to festivals abroad with Being Osama, he was told by the authorities not to bother going back. Yet the director remains upbeat. "September 11 definitely made my career," he says. "There is now a thirst for films about Islam." He has decided to stay in Dubai. "This is a young country which was modernised only 30 years ago. There are stories to be told of the urbanisation of traditional society," he explains.

"September 11 has changed things 100 per cent. They are more emotional and hurtful," says Ali F Moustafa, whose short film, Under the Sun, shows a small Muslim boy who starts to question his faith during the first day of the Ramadan fast.

But, although people keep reminding me that there are 200 million Arabic speakers, Arab cinema has yet to acquire a strong sense of identity, both for itself and in the eyes of international audiences.

The British-Yemeni producer Ahmad Abdali believes that the Arab world is still fragmented, but that the rise of satellite television is having a unifying effect. "And the events of the last five years have allowed the Arab world to become more introspective," he adds. "To create a new wave that shatters preconceptions. We are asking what our role is in the world." It's a sentiment echoed by Abu-Assad. "I didn't choose this role, but I feel responsible for protecting the dignity of the Arab people," he says. "We have a huge responsibility now that our politicians have failed us."

Abdali has just produced Yemen's first ever feature film. "And it might be the last," its director, Bader Ben Hirsi, says darkly. A New Day In Old Sana'a, a love story set in this ancient World Heritage City, has a production history in stark contrast to its gentle subject-matter. Boldly, the film-makers raised their $1.5m budget entirely in Yemen, from sources ranging from product-placement to investment from the ministry of tourism. "Tourism nosedived after September 11, and it wasn't much to begin with," Ben Hirsi says.

When their leading man, an Austrian, was stabbed two weeks before the shoot, in a spate of violence against Westerners, their troubles were only beginning. Subsequent travails included accusations of filming pornography inside mosques and of working with the CIA and/or Mossad, and questions asked in parliament. Then, having invested $40,000 in the movie, the ministry of culture wanted to ban it. "I wouldn't make a film there again," Ben Hirsi says.

He reports interest from Arab distributors after A New Day won a major prize at the Cairo Film Festival last month. "But European buyers ask, 'Where's the violence, where's the war?'," Ben Hirsi complains. "They want something sensationalist." Eventually, however, Abdali hopes, "people will tire of films about terrorism."