Having missed most of his classes and exams at university, his French residency is not renewed and he is given 30 days to leave the territory, after which he would become an illegal, undocumented immigrant, unless he finds a job. Given the urgency, Sof has no other choice but to accept employment at his father’s relative’s Muslim burial house, where he will accompany El Haj (Mostafa DjamDjam), a mysterious, taciturn character, in his burial rituals. Little by little, a whole new, unexpected universe opens up before Sof, which summons him to reconsider his cultural and social affiliations, and to reflect upon his own journey thus far.

The viewer is able to follow the multi-layered path of Sof’s growth and process of mental maturation while he attempts to reckon with his own past: his mother’s passing while he was young, his turbulent relationship with his father and siblings, the way he is perceived by a potential lover who ends up orientalising him, his relationship with the diverse Muslim community and the role he plays in washing their corpses, his growing mentee relationship with El Haj…all these delineate individual threads which taken together, draw a complete, rounded portrait of a young man’s efforts to speak truth to one’s self. 

The strength of this coming-of-age film undeniably lies in its ability to weave imbricated stories posited at the juncture between personal narratives and the common theme of belonging, while superbly managing to navigate the complexity of identity and identitarian discourse, without ever falling into the easy trap of stereotyping. Unlike many other films tackling such themes, Six Feet Over represents a reconciliation with one’s multiple beings in the form of a poetic and at times, comical ode. The film won the Silver Yusr for Best Screenplay at the Red Sea International Film Festival in 2023.

Six Feet Over (Karim Bensalah, France, 2023, 96 min.)

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Yellow Bus opens on a joyful morning in Ananda (Tannishtha Chatterjee) and Gagan (Amit Sial)’s small apartment, set in an unnamed, hot and dusty city in the Gulf. The morning routine resembles that of everyday: mother Ananda prepares breakfast and lunch boxes, father Gagan gets ready for work on the construction site, while daughters Ravina (Aarushi Laud) and Anju (Kshethra Mithun) prepare for yet another day at school, at the renowned Al-Ameer Academy, a beacon for future economic emancipation. The Indian family moved to the Gulf before the girls were born, searching for better life prospects and economic stability. All seems perfectly in order and the family displays scenes of an idyllic, harmonious life.

Ananda sees her daughters off as the school yellow bus comes to collect them. Soon after, however, she receives a fatidic phone call from the school administration announcing the tragic turn of events: Anju, who had fallen asleep during the ride, has been left to suffocate to death in the blistering, boiling bus, parked for hours under the midday scorching sun. The school headmistress hastily places all blames on the Pakistani driver and the Filipina bus attendant, which, as she reports, have been promptly dismissed. She hastens to bury the accident, offering compensation money to Ananda, which the latter refuses.

Here, a tension between Gagan and Ananda arises. While the father is keen to stoically accept his fate and carry on with life, Ananda’s search for truth and accountability becomes unquenchable. Her own  investigation on the case progressively reveals the intricacies of a rotten system capitalising on neo-liberal values, on the exploitation of cheap, disposable labour, and a discriminate or non-existent judiciary system. Gagan is very much aware of his vulnerable position as an Indian construction site manager in the Gulf, one whose residency and thus livelihood is incumbent on being submissive to the system. Ananda, on the other hand, embodies the undefeated mother’s relentless fight for justice and accountability. Her refusal, from the onset, to accept the official narrative of a series of negligence and mishaps and to submit to her humble position of a powerless immigrant woman eventually brings about a sense of justice.

Bednarz’s award-winning modern-day thriller sheds light on an all-too common series of tragic events which afflict the underground, vulnerable working force of the Gulf, for whom the cost of justice often represents too high of a price to be pursued. It further weaves the portrait of the universal, staunch mother figure -superbly acted by Tannishtha Chatterjee- in the face of brutal, yet avoidable plights.

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What ensues is a series of bitter failures to do so within the imposed timeline. Rifqi’s growing impatience leads him to summon Nawal to hand him the apartment not only in order to repay for the debt but also because, as he claims, he is the sole legal inheritor to Adnan, since the latter did not beget any male offspring. Nawal objects that she is the one who provided the money for the downpayment and that she can supply the legal document proving her absolute right to the property. However, she soon discovers that her late husband has neglected to add his signature to the contract, thereby rendering the document completely obsolete. 

Rifqi understands that the patriarchal laws are to his advantage: he begins exerting different forms of pressure over Nawal, from keeping her daughter at his house without informing her, to trying to convince a judge that she is an unfit mother, or yet again, to use Nawal’s brother as an assertive and compliant intermediary- all this, in the hope that his newly-assigned authority will eventually break her. Nawal has no other choice than to pretend she is pregnant and to speculate she might soon be able to know the sex of the ingrowing foetus, inshallah a boy. She is thus able to buy time and halt the inheritance procedure in favour of her brother-in-law. The final scene operates a zoom in on Nawal’s radiating face, echoing a scene at the beginning of the film, only now with a renewed sense of assertiveness and empowerment.

Very much intertwined with Nawal’s own unfolding whirlpool of battles, the shorter, parallel story involving Lauren (Yumna Marwan), the granddaughter of the wealthy elderly Christian woman Nawal looks after, tells of a similar struggle: with the help of Nawal, Lauren resorts to an illegal abortion since she refuses to be tied to her unfaithful husband. However, later, a scene shows her disfigured by what seems to have been an acid attack probably carried out by her vengeful husband.

Nawal and Lauren stem from different economic, social, and religious backgrounds and yet, their respective fights against an unjust system which oppresses them suggests that no woman is safe in a patriarchal and misogynist society. Amjad Al Rasheed’s film depicts a gripping and suspenseful portrait of the resilience and resourcefulness of Jordanian women and was the first-ever Jordanian feature to premiere in the Critics’ Week at Cannes 2023, winning the Gan Foundation Award and the Rail d’Or Award for Best Feature Film.

Inshallah a Boy (dir. Amjad Al Rasheed, Jordan/France/Saudi Arabia/Qatar, 2023, 113 min.)

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Director Amr Gamal’s second feature film is the first Yemeni film to have been screened at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2023 and to have subsequently won a vast array of awards at international festivals. I had the chance to watch it when it was screened at the Al Film, Berlin Arab Film Festival in April 2024. 

The Burdened follows the journey of a middle-class Yemeni family as the everyday becomes progressively more difficult to manage on account of the ongoing civil war and the ensuing inflation and economic deprivation.  Isra’ (Abeer Mohammed) and her husband Ahmed (Khaled Hamdan) -a former TV employee who now resorts to driving a minibus to ensure a daily wage- must give up the comfort of their small apartment which they share with their three children and move to an inconspicuous studio located on the outskirts of the city, by a cemetery and a dumpster. These are times marked by constant hardship and every small expenditure demands great sacrifice and recourse to alternative resources. 

The family’s misfortune only grows when the couple realises Isra’ is pregnant with a fourth child, which, both agree, they cannot afford to bring up in their current situation. What follows is then an impossible quest to try and terminate the pregnancy. Isra’ first turns to her old friend Mona, a practicing gynaecologist at the local hospital, only to be reprimanded for wanting to commit a sinful act. The weight of this societal taboo does not, however, halt Isra’ and Ahmed’s determination; on the contrary, the couple explores all possibilities as the abortion becomes a sine qua non condition of their family’s sheer survival. The despair leads them to solicit the services of a dubious woman who practices illegal and unsafe abortions at home in exchange for a wad of notes. Realising her friend is ready to put her own life on the line in order to have the abortion, Mona suddenly shows up and interrupts the illegal procedure and then offers Isra’ to carry it out herself in the safer environment of the hospital, under the pretence that the foetus is not viable. Mona thus jeopardises her own career and beliefs and subsequently takes distance from her friend once the procedure is achieved.

The Burdened is a stunning film; one that beautifully depicts the tour de force operated by the main protagonists (exceptionally performed by the actors) in the face of the dire conditions of present-day Yemen, its run-down hospitals, destitute population, lack of proper infrastructure, and takeover by militias.

The Burdened (Amr Gamal, Yemen/Sudan/Saudi Arabia, 2023, 91 min.)

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