CANNES: A boy who takes his parents to court for having him is one of a wave of Arab films making people sit up and take notice at the Cannes film festival.
Not since 1970 have two Arab films been in the running for the Palme d’Or top prize and female Arab directors are particularly making a splash this year.
Lebanese film-maker Nadine Labaki’s highly-anticipated third film “Capernaum” — about a 12-year-old boy with an axe to grind about being born into a miserable, loveless existence — has racked up a string of distribution deals ahead of its premiere late Thursday.
And two first-time female directors made impressive debuts with films about suffocating social conventions in Syria and Morocco.
But while the #MeToo movement continued to make waves, with several Hollywood actresses ditching frilly frocks for pants for their photo shoots, Arab film-makers appeared more concerned with social alienation.
Labaki, who set her first film “Caramel” in a Beirut beauty parlour, zooms in on neglected children and migrants in “Capernaum,” which has drawn comparisons with Charlie Chaplin’s story of a street boy, “The Kid.”
Labaki said she found the idea staring her in the face one night when she was driving home from a party.
“I stopped at a traffic light and saw a child half-asleep in the arms of his mother, who was sitting on the tarmac begging.”
The encounter spurred her to use a mostly hard-up, amateur cast including a Syrian refugee child for the lead role.
Going toe-to-toe with her and the likes of Spike Lee for the Palme d’Or — won only twice in 70 years by Arab directors — is A.B. Shawky, with his feel-good first feature about an Egyptian leper and his orphan friend, also played by amateurs.
A year after the award-winning “The Nile Hilton Incident,” a noirish tale of murder and corruption set during the 2011 revolution in Cairo, “Yomeddine” serves up less political fare.
“What I really want to do is highlight marginalized groups. I wanted to give a voice to people who don’t necessarily have anybody to speak for them,” said Austrian-Egyptian writer-director Shakwy.
Similarly, the Moroccan entry about an unmarried woman threatened with jail for falling pregnant is actually more preoccupied with class divisions.
The film shows a middle-class, 20-year-old from a Casablanca family scrambling to avoid bringing shame on her family after an unwanted pregnancy.
The real victim in the affair, however, is not the one left holding the baby.
“I found that the debate about the condition of women in the Arab world was being reduced to the issue of patriarchy and chauvinism, which to me falls short of the mark,” director Meryem Benm’Barek told AFP.
“Whether you are a man or a woman, what determines whether or not you are a victim is your social status,” she said.
Tunisia director Mohamed Ben Attia’s “Dear Son,” about a father trying to trace his son who has run away to join the Daesh group, is also more family drama than a political broadside.
The birthplace of the Arab Spring, which has been mired in economic crisis ever since, is estimated to have supplied more militants in Syria than any other country.
Ben Attia, who won acclaim with “Hedi,” about a young man torn between duty and passion in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution, tries to tease out the malaise behind the lure of Daesh for disaffected Muslim youths.
Like Labaki, Shawky and Benm’Barek, he believes the story could be transposed to many parts of the globe.
“There is a sort of misery, not only spiritual but emotional, not so much a thirst for ideology as a desire to walk away from this lifestyle... and all the values that are foisted on us.
“They could be living in Paris or elsewhere, it’s the same,” Ben Attia added.
War and unfulfilled desires also collide in the Syrian film, “My Favourite Fabric,” the first film of Paris-based Syrian director Gaya Jiji.
French-Lebanese actress Manal Issa puts in a standout performance as a sullen young Syrian fantasising about sexual abandon and escaping to the West as the war drums begin to beat in early 2011.
She carried her protest over onto the red carpet at Cannes, where she held up a placard reading “Stop the Attack on Gaza.”
Gaza also made it onto the big screen, in a documentary by Italian filmmaker Stefano Savona about the massacre of an extended Palestinian family in 2009 that received rave reviews.
With Saudi Arabia also unveiling big tax breaks for filmmakers at Cannes — Arab cinema may be entering a new era.
Arab cinema back with a bang; bringing lepers, lust and class conflict to Cannes
Arab cinema back with a bang; bringing lepers, lust and class conflict to Cannes
- Not since 1970 have two Arab films been in the running for the Palme d’Or top prize and female Arab directors are particularly making a splash this year.
- Nadine Labaki, who set her first film ‘Caramel’ in a Beirut beauty parlour, zooms in on neglected children and migrants in ‘Capernaum.’
OPINION: Saudi Arabia’s cultural continuum: from heritage to contemporary AlUla
- The director of arts & creative industries at the Royal Commission for AlUla writes about the Kingdom’s cultural growth
AlUla: Saudi Arabia’s relationship with culture isa long and rich. It doesn’t begin with modern museums or contemporary installations, but in the woven textiles of nomadic encampments, traditional jewellery and ceramics, and of course palm‑frond weaving traditions. For centuries, Saudi artisans have worked with materials drawn directly from their environment creating objects that are functional, but also expressions of identity and artistry.
Many of these traditions have been recognised internationally, with crafts such as Al-Sadu weaving inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
This grounding in landscapes, resources, and collective history means Saudi Arabia’s current cultural momentum is not sudden, but the natural result of decades — even centuries — of groundwork. From the preservation of heritage sites and, areas, some of which have been transformed into world-renowned art districts, to, the creation of institutions devoted to craft, the stage has been set for a moment where contemporary creativity can move forward with confidence, because it is deeply rooted.
AlUla, with its 7,000 years of human history, offers one of the clearest views into this continuum. Millennia-old inscriptions at Dadan and Jabal Ikmah stand alongside restored mudbrick homes in Old Town and UNESCO-listed Hegra. In the present, initiatives like Madrasat Addeera carry forward AlUla’s craft traditions through design residencies and material research. And, each winter, the AlUla Arts Festival knots these threads together, creating a season in which heritage and contemporary practice meet.
This year, that dialogue began in the open desert with Desert X AlUla 2026. Now in its fourth edition, the exhibition feels like the pinnacle of the current moment where contemporary art, heritage, and forward-thinking meet without boundaries. The theme of Desert X AlUla 2026 was “Space Without Measure,” inspired by the work of Lebanese-American artist and writer Kahlil Gibran[HA1] [MJ2] . The theme invited artists to respond to the horizons of AlUla’s landscape and interpret its wonder through their perspective.
Works by Saudi and international figures converse directly with nature: Mohammed Al-Saleem’s modernist sculptures bring in celestial-inspired geometry; Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons translates the colour of AlUla’s sunsets; Agnes Denes “Living Pyramid” turns the oasis into a vertical landscape of indigenous plants, . The 11 artists of this year’s edition were able to capture AlUla’s essence while creating monumental works that speak directly to our relationship with the environment.
In AlJadidah Arts District, “Material Witness: Celebrating Design From Within,” features heritage craft and material research from Madrasat Addeera alongside work by regional and international designers, showing how they translate heritage materials into contemporary forms.[HA3] [MJ4]
Music adds another element of vitality, filling the streets of AlJadidah Arts District, with performances supported by AlUla Music Hub, featuring local musicians.
The opening of “Arduna,” the first exhibition presented byof the AlUla Contemporary Art Museum, co-curated with France’s Centre Pompidou, adds another layer to this conversation. Featuring Saudi, regional, and international artists, from Picasso and Kandinsky to Etel Adnan, Ayman Zedani and Manal AlDowayan, the [HA5] [MJ6] exhibition signals the emergence of a global institution rooted in the heritage and environment of AlUla, placing local voices in context with world masters.
Each activation in this year’s AlUla Arts Festival is part of the same Saudi cultural continuum, . This is why the Kingdom’s cultural rise feels different from rapid developments elsewhere. The scale of cultural infrastructure investment is extraordinary, but its deeper strength lies in how that investment connects to living traditions and landscapes.
The journey is only accelerating. Rooted in heritage yet open to the world, the Kingdom’s cultural future is being shaped not by sudden inspiration, but by our traditions and history meeting the imagination and creative voices of our present.
