[LCM Articles] "Under the Bombs" wins Best Film & Actress @ Dubai Festival

[Loai Naamani]

By director of "Bosta <http://www.bostathemovie.com/> ", Philippe Aractingi
Trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbabkJPcTts
Official Website: www.underthebombs.com <http://www.underthebombs.com/>  

 

Lebanon war film takes award at Dubai film festival

By Lin Noueihed
Reuters
Sunday, December 16, 2007; 5:02 AM

DUBAI (Reuters) - "Under the Bombs," a movie about interfaith love during
the 2006 war in Lebanon, was named best film in Dubai's awards for Arab
cinema, in a year when films about conflict abounded.

Lebanon's Nada Abou Farhat also won the best actress award on Saturday for
her role as Zeina, a Shi'ite Muslim divorcee who heads to southern Lebanon
in the midst of the fighting to search for her son and falls in love with a
Christian taxi driver.

"I felt the hatred building inside of me and I wanted to get it out ... I
wanted to make something against hate," Lebanese director Philippe Aractingi
told the audience on picking up his Muhr Award, shaped like a horse's head.

Both Aractingi and Abou Farhat dedicated their awards to those who died in
the month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas that displaced
hundreds of thousands of Lebanese and saw many of their homes destroyed.

Aractingi's last film "Bosta," Lebanon's entry for the Academy Awards
foreign-language film in 2006, was a popular musical comedy and "Under the
Bombs" was a surprise choice for many critics who felt it was picked for its
subject matter.

"Aesthetically speaking, I thought a number of other films were better than
'Under the Bombs,' both 'Yellow House,' which took no prizes, in either
Cairo or here, and the 'Secret of the Grain,"' said Beirut-based film critic
Jim Quilty.

"There are two main criteria in judging a film; you can look at the topic or
at more aesthetic aspects and the two films that have taken gold in Dubai
for the first two years suggest the story is more important."

"The Secret of the Grain," Tunisian Abdellatif Kechiche's well-received film
about reuniting family, took the bronze award this year. Nouri Bouzid's "The
Making of," which centers on a film shoot in Tunisia as the Iraq war
unfolds, won silver.

The Dubai film festival, in its fourth year, launched the Muhr Awards for
Excellence in Arab Cinema in 2006.

The festival attracts many Arab filmmakers because its industry section
encourages international co-productions and its trophies come with cash
prizes of up to $50,000.

Lebanon's 15-year civil war has long been the main source of inspiration for
Lebanese filmmakers.

Borhane Alaouie's post-civil war film "Khalass" scooped best screenplay and
best editing. Three documentaries that screened at Dubai also explore the
2006 war, but won no awards.

Mai Masri's "33 Days" follows a group of Lebanese journalists and activists
as the war unfolds.

Anwar Brahem's "Words in the Wake of War" mixes interviews with six
well-known Lebanese intellectuals and artists with footage from the 2006
war, the civil war and happier times.

Best documentary went to Karim Goury's "Made in Egypt," about the
French-Egyptian director's search for his heritage. Silver and bronze went
to Palestinian films; "Maria's Grotto" by Bouthaina Khoury Kanaan and
"Shadow of Absence" by Nasri Hajjaj.

(editing by Elizabeth Piper)

C 2007 Reuters

 


By director of "Bosta <http://www.bostathemovie.com/> ", Philippe Aractingi
Trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbabkJPcTts
Official Website: www.underthebombs.com <http://www.underthebombs.com/> 

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