DUBAI: Saudi dark comedy “A Matter of Life and Death” screened in New York on Saturday, after showing in two Scandinavian locations earlier this year.
Starring Saudi actor Sarah Taibah and directed by Anas Ba-Tahaf, the film screened at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York. It was hosted by ANA Contemporary Arab Cinema.
“A Matter of Life and Death” was written by Taibah and she stars as one of the lead characters. In the movie 29-year-old Hayat believes she has inherited a family curse that means she will die on her 30th birthday. The stubborn and superstitious Hayat decides to take matters into her own hands. When she meets heart surgeon Youssef in the emergency room, she is convinced that he is meant to assist her.
“Dark comedy is my favorite genre,” Taibah previously told Arab News. “So many comedy films are just silly jokes and nothing is serious, and so many Arabic dramas we watch are so much cheating, and weeping on the floor, and so much sadness. But what I like about dark comedy is that it’s closest to reality — I have days where I’ll cry my eyes out and then really have fun later on. Sometimes I laugh in the middle of crying. If you laugh at problems, they suddenly become lighter.”
Director Ba-Tahaf told Arab News: “I think audiences generally will relate, because, at its core, it’s a movie about generational trauma, and how the way we were raised, or the way we saw our parents dealing with each other, affects how we live our lives. And I think that’s a very universal thing. Then there’s the idea of obsession, or the idea of trying to be in control of everything, and again that’s something that is international.”
The film screened in Oslo and Helsinki this year, after it premiered at the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah in December.
Saturday’s one-night-only screening marked the movie’s first showing in the US.
