Why Are Middle-Eastern/Arabic Movies Ignored?

Cafe Society
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I chat on dozens of movie sites, and movies from this region are ignored. I must admit I have seen no more than a dozen or so, but a couple of years ago, after seeing a documentary on TCM, I saw an Egyptian movie (Chit-Chat On The Nile) and it was so different, yet so great. I remember seeing “Cairo '30” (which was probably the best, not my favorite that I mentioned above), “Cairo Station” and “There Is A Man In Our House”. I can’t remember the others, but I’m guessing they were probably directed by Henry Barakat, and starred Famen Hamama or Omar Sharif. Adapted or written by Mahfouz, who’s shown to be one hell of a writer. I actually remember reading about him in Time Magazine when I was a kid. I also remember telling my aunt, who said, “He was kind of perverted” and went on to say how great Khalil Jibran was.

Last year, TCM started showing a documentary series called, “Women Make Film”, and they were saying how many women were producers, directors, writers, and leading ladies, of course. I added movies to my watch-list.

There’s some really good Iranian movies. It seems like half are very metaphysical. There’s a movie within a movie within a movie. I can’t remember the title, but there was one about this little girl actress, and it’s done so well, I wasn’t sure if it was part of the story, or if it was part of the movie they were filming (which we don’t discover until around that time). Abbas Kiarostami is another name. “Close-Up” is an amazing idea, but “Taste of Cherry” is my favorite of his. Even the ending is unique and metaphysical.

What I’ve admired the most is the writing, regardless of who it is. A lot of social commentary, sometimes political, mixed in with love stories, and always searching for some kind of truth within the main characters. The “heavies” are always boorish and logical, while the third wheel (the single unmarried man) is always the romantic one. The women can’t be described. Sensuous, but modest. Romantic, but trying to be responsible. Traditional at times, but constantly breaking with the past. I should point out most of the movies I have seen were from the 1950s and 60s.

“Dry Summer” is an excellent Turkish movie. Great story, acting, etc.

One thing that’s common in all of them is the beautiful poetry. With the story, themes, writing, acting, cinematography, music - everything.

I also remember studying the first civilizations in school here in the US… I still remember reading about the first city of Ur, Mesopotamia, the beginning of alphabet/writing (Sumerian), the wheel, and a million other inventions, such as irrigation, the Tigris and the Euphrates, the pyramids, the center of the three major Abrahamic religions, and this isn’t ignored in the movies, even if it’s not explicit. Sometimes you’ll be watching a love story, and a couple meet by the pyramids, or someone tells their friend to meet them in Mosul, but of course the more intellectual movies mention politics, the history of societies, you name it… The US is such a young country, there’s only so much we can extrapolate and make into a movie with the limited palette.

I also remember reading how one movie in the 1950s had such an influence in Egypt, that it made it much easier for women to divorce. “JFK” is a horrible movie (Jim Garrison is the hero, not stone) but it also helped to change the law when it came to transparency.

I’m obsessed with chronology, capturing the zeitgeist (as opposed to the typical world events) in part to learn about history, trends, influence, comparing fiction with real life for its time, evolution of film, so I would start with the earliest movies, and move forward, to see how they got here at this point in history. I would see more, but finding subtitles can be tough, but there are some movies on YouTube (usually the popular ones, not the best) and one I really liked from 1972 that I saw yesterday after scrolling around Prime and seeing the interesting title, “Empire M”, and it’s a really unique movie. I just saw “The River of Love” but the translations could use improvement, and I might try to upload my own.

Have you seen any?

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I will posit that very few foreign films (particularly those from non-Anglophone countries) get any sort of wide play in the U.S. to start with.

Most Americans have probably never seen a French film, an Indian “Bollywood” film, a German film, etc., and outside of art-house theaters and niche audiences, they just don’t get shown here. Films from Middle Eastern countries aren’t a particular special case, in this regard.

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People watch movies that they can relate to. It’s not that foreign films can’t be good but people to some extend like to fantasize that they or someone they know about is in the movie.

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i watched a series i can’t remember the name of earlier this year. it was a horror mystery type show. i remember there being a creepy old mansion with a creepy kid in it.

then it somehow morphed into hunting some sort of demon spawn in the desert.

I stopped watching after that bc it got too weird.

Really, it was the culture of the series that kept me watching for as long as I did.

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I’m not familiar with movies from the region in the 50s/60s which seem to be from your post most of what you’re talking about, I have been exposed to a few movies that have come from the region in the last 20 years and they have universally been poorly acted, directed, filmed, written etc. It almost immediately strays into Great Debates territory, but the 50s and 60s was a time when many of the countries in the region were Westernizing in many ways and this probably allowed for greater artistic freedom. Even a modestly free country like Turkey for example the films I’ve seen out of there have trended towards very conservative viewpoints and I think that affects how creative the artists can be.

Again, without trying to get into Great Debate territory, I have to guess these are some of the reasons you’ve been able to find some gems from that era but maybe aren’t seeing as many from modern times. I believe Saudi Arabia as one example actually banned cinemas from operating for 35 years. A lot of the Arab and Middle Eastern countries had societal problems in response to previous attempts to Westernize, and this resulted in cultural crackdowns that affected many forms of art.

Your OP is titled Middle-Eastern / Arabic, but mentions Iran–it’s worth remembering Iran is not Arabic nor is Arabic / Middle-Eastern synonymous terms. Two significant countries–Turkey and Iran, are not ethnically Arab but are commonly considered to be in the Middle East geographic region.

Iran has been considered one of the better film countries since the late 1990s, among certain film buf types. They have a pretty healthy domestic film industry and many local filmmakers and actors working in the Persian language.

Apparently in the Arab world the last 20 years has been considered a bad time for cinema, with many complaints about systemic declines in Arab filmmaking and a predominance of foreign films dominating Arab markets. So it seems like there is less product coming out of the Arab language markets than in the past, it’s been noted at hits height, Egypt which was considered the “Arab Hollywood” was producing 60 feature length films a year, in modern times there have regularly been only around a dozen. Foreign films, and specifically non-English language films always have a very hard time breaking into the American market because you either have to dub them (which many people myself included dislike aesthetically), or you have to subtitle them, which I’m fine with but many American movie watchers will not watch a subtitled movie. You then sometimes have adaptations by Western studios of prominent foreign films, with Hollywood cast and filmed in English, but that usually happens for really big hits that come out of foreign language cinema. Against those forces, if Arab cinema is also producing a lot less feature length films these days, it means it’s even less likely any of them filter into the American cultural sphere.

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Back in BC (before covid), we went to both the International Film Festival and the African Film Festival here in Portland. We saw some excellent films and some clunkers, but I know that some of them were middle-eastern in origin.

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English is widely known, so those movies will always have more availability, which can lead to the possibility for interest. I would think more movie buffs would like at least a couple. Hell, just for curiosity.

I think part of it is celebrity. People know Bergman is Swedish, but probably can’t name 5 other directors from Sweden. Japan and Kurosawa, even Abbas Kiarostami and Iran.

A guy on another site (from Turkey) said he has no interest because he knows the culture… But most don’t know it, which you’d think would be alluring. But then after reading different posts on other sites, a few others were pretty racist, and think the culture of dozens of countries are portrayed accurately in the many movies that only have them as terrorists.

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To a small number of people, perhaps it is. Unfortunately, many (perhaps even most) Americans aren’t particularly curious about other cultures, and are unlikely to seek out opportunities to learn more about them.

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Also, some notes from a 2020 Morning Consult article, which came out just as the South Korean film Parasite was popular:

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Netflix has some movies and TV shows from Turkey. I watched the first season of The Protector and have started watching Atiye: The Gift. Yes, my tastes run toward science fiction, fantasy, superheroes, and other nerd stuff. However, Netflix also has more serious dramas and some historical/documentary content from Turkey. Google also yields lists of Iranian movies and series on Netflix, and a few Egyptian, Palestinian, Jordanian, Lebanese, and Saudi Arabian titles.

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Aren’t they all newer movies? I’ve found my favorites all to be from the 50/60s… I think foreign movies from all over took a bit of a downturn in the 70s, but American movies got better. There are exceptions - the greats like De Sica (who died about mid-70s) made a couple of great ones. As great as Bergman was, the 70s was a downturn for even him, and only went downhill, and felt like his last “Saraband” (2003) was just recycled stuff…

Most of what I have seen Egyptian, and I’ve seen a handful of great movies on YouTube. I use the filter to make sure they have subtitles. If one is computer savvy, they can find almost any movie with the subtitles.

I’ll add that I hardly ever see Chinese movies, but will make an effort to find them in the future.

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I’ve seen about 20 films from Iran. Most of them I watched in preparation for a trip there a few years ago.

I started off by watching some of the films of Abbas Kiarostami. He’s a film-school favorite. Conceptually, he is pretty ingenious (just check out the premise for his film Close-Up!). Yet watching his films can still feel like a bit of a slog.

When Iranian films are discussed, Kiarostami is the first (and often the only) director mentioned. That’s unfortunate, because there are two others whose work is more engaging and relatable.

The first is Jafar Panahi. One of his films is about young women soccer fans sneaking into a stadium that is male-only (Offside). Another one (The Circle) is about a couple of working-class women, recently escaped from prison, who cannot even take a bus trip or check into a hotel because they don’t have a male there to vouch for them.

The second director, and my hands-down favorite, is Asghar Farhadi.

One of his earlier films, About Elly, is particularly engaging. On the surface, it follows a group of friends on vacation as they tease, flirt, and argue. But it’s also about how social norms in Iran can lead to miscommunication and dishonesty, with awful consequences. It’s a bit like Secrets and Lies if Mike Leigh were Iranian.

Farhadi’s other films also focus on relationships – spouses, relatives, neighbors – and issues of communication and trust. As a plus, these films really give foreigners a sense of how ordinary Iranians live.

As @Martin_Hyde points out, censorship is a blight on the region’s film industry. Each of the directors mentioned above struggled mightily with Tehran’s censors, and two of them eventually opted to make films outside Iran. The third, Panahi, was sentenced to prison for his films and banned from making any in the future. (He responded by making a documentary called This Is Not A Film and having it smuggled out of the country.)

Many Iranian films can be seen in their entirety, and with English-language subtitles, on Youtube.

Ironically, on my trip to Iran, the locals whom I talked with weren’t interested in movies.

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It’s rare for any non-English-language film to get much play in the US. So I would have expected most middle-eastern films to be ignored, as they are probably in Persian, Arabic, or Turkish.

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It’s not just in the United States - I don’t think many Europeans, Indians or East Asians watch movies in Persian, Arabic or Turkish, either. As a rule, most people anywhere in the world only watch movies in their own language, and in English. Everyone watches movies from their own film industry, and from Hollywood, and that’s it. Americans are only different in that Hollywood IS their own film industry.

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I know nothing about it, so I consulted my daughter. She probably qualifies as an expert; she said that movies from Iran have gotten a fair amount of attention. I know she’s seen several at AFI (a mile or so away from us) and at film festivals.

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? ISTM that lots of people in many places in the world watch non-English foreign-language movies that are subtitled or dubbed in their own language. This is true not only for moviegoers in many European countries, but elsewhere as well: e.g., Hindi speakers watch Hindi versions of Tamil movies and vice versa, and people in many African countries watch dubbed or subtitled Nigerian movies.

You’re right that most people anywhere in the world probably watch more own-native-language and/or Hollywood movies than any other kind, but I think “only” is a massive overstatement.

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I love foreign films, but I’ve had access to them all my life growing up in the L.A. area. I’ve seen so many great ones, that I can’t imagine passing on just because they had subtitles.

No one has mentioned Israeli films, but I saw on a year or two ago that I loved – Zero Motivation – about a group of women drafted into the army.

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Sounds like The Mirror by Jafar Panahi?

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Yes it is, thank you very much!

Blockquote Chad_Sudan
I’ve only seen three of Kiarostami’s movies… “Taste of Cherry” was on YouTube, then “Close-Up” (how awkward must that have been!), but I tried a few others, including one of his last ones, which was in English, and I couldn’t get past the 20 minute mark.

I saw a Lebanese movie from the 50s yesterday, (“Where To?”)… A mix of neo-realism and melodrama. 7/10. It’s on Mubi via Prime, but if you have Prime, check out “Empire M” - it’s creative, and Faten Hamama is always good, especially with Omar Sharif, who she married. “River of Love” is a damn good movie, on YouTube with subtitles… I definitely love the older b&w Egyptian movies, but finding subtitles is sometimes difficult.

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Back when I was more into foreign films, I watched several Iranian films by Kiarostami. One I remember is The White Balloon, about a girl who wants to buy a goldfish, but drops her money into a sewer grate on the way to the store, and needs help to get it out. Seriously, that’s basically the whole film. It’s minimalism on steroids. Or the whatever the opposite of a steroid is. But I quite enjoyed it.