A new festival of films from across the Muslim world opens next week with screenings in Kilburn and Dalston.
The first Qisah International Film Festival sees 14 feature films by Muslim and non-Muslim filmmakers from the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, the former USSR, Europe, North America, and Central and South Asia.
Meaning ‘stories’ in Arabic, Qisah offers a platform for films exploring Muslim life in all its complexity, diversity and change. With screenings at Kiln Cinema, Lyric Hammersmith, and Rio Dalston, the programme includes period, contemporary and documentary films on themes ranging from family, resilience, patriarchy, secularism and religion, to love.
Curated by academic Asad Ali and Phillippe Jalladeau who previously ran the Festival du Trois Continent in Nantes, the debut programme also raises questions of politics, censorship and colonialism.
Festival director Ahmed Jamal praised the varied programme of powerful, entertaining stories, and confident filmmaking.
“As a melting pot, London is the perfect location to expose a wider audience to the variety of Muslim life, society and history through films, giving audiences a greater understanding of the life so many of their neighbours either come from or have roots bedded in," he said.
Ali said the festival focuses on the internal perspectives of local filmmakers.
“Mainstream cinema all too often depicts Muslims in stereotypical ways: gun toting terrorists, veiled women and the call to prayer. Qisah showcases cinema that explores the cultural vibrancy, ordinary struggles and diversity of life in Muslim countries. As against the imaginary of Muslims as homogenous, the festival shows Muslims in their heterogeneity, diversity and differences in films that widen our view of the human experience and highlight the similarity of the human condition.”
Screenings include a UK premiere of French film Our Brothers, Moroccan documentary Before the Dying of the Light, and Quareer, an anthology of short films by five young female directors from Saudi Arabia followed by a Q&A at Kiln.
Kiln hosts the opening night - the UK premiere of Iranian filmmaker Saeed Roystayi's Leila’s Brothers featuring Taraneh Alidoosti as a woman negotiating and challenging the patriarchy - striving to keep her family afloat amid constant undermining by status-obsessed male relatives.
The festival wraps up at the Kilburn venue with Tanzanian Oscar entry, Tug of War, a coming-of-age romance from director Amil Shivji set in Zanzibar at the end of British colonialism as a freedom fighter becomes involved with a girl escaping an arranged marriage.
Qisah International Film Festival runs November 9-12. https://www.qiff.co.uk/
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