Reviews

Education, parental relations and identity are at the heart of the movies filmed on both sides of the Mediterranean

Spectacular endings and role reversals in the films on Muslims of the West

When films anticipate the debate in the Islamic world and the West

Religions, violence and terrorism at the cinema

When Hollywood does not understand what is happening, it shows up badly

Directors of different cultures between horror and the beauty that saves the world

The cinema finds the allure of revolutions irresistible because the seventh art is built on the attraction of the instant, the breaking point that accompanies protests. Whereas it is harder to tell the story, on the big screen, of the long period following revolts that is needed for the building of democracy and the quest for political compromise. And yet there are people who can do it.

The wall that separates Jews and Muslims, like the line that passes between ‘the faithful’ and ‘infidels’, has always been particularly generous in providing points of departure for cinema which, in this new season as well, has offered various films. From those which are more charged with hope and prospects to those which are more utopian and on to those which are pure shipwrecks of despair.

The need for freedom and for authentic relationships is sometimes crushed by legal systems which seem to get further away from it and indeed even at times betray it or deny it

‘Deprived of almost everything, they suffer from a heavy repression imposed by power. One need only observe the misery in which most of families live to understand that in all autocracies it is the people who pay the highest price’ (Youssef Chahine, Egyptian film director).

From Spain to France and Iran: cinema and the men of God

In the cinema of today (but also in that of yesterday) what still manages to surprise and move us is the crossing of two human pathways, where the real denominator common to everyone emerges: the need for love and happiness. And it is not just by chance that often a master and a disciple  come to meet at that crossroads