{"id":403215,"date":"2026-02-02T02:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T02:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/403215\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T02:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T02:08:08","slug":"the-arab-director-on-moving-from-documentary-to-fiction-rotterdam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/403215\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Arab’ Director on Moving From Documentary to Fiction: Rotterdam"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAlbert Camus\u2019 novel The Stranger\u00a0(L\u2019\u00e9tranger) recently got a cinema adaptation, under the same title, by French director Fran\u00e7ois Ozon<\/a>, which is part of the lineup of the\u00a055th edition<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0International Film Festival Rotterdam<\/a>\u00a0(IFFR<\/a>). But another film related to the Camus classic world premiered in the Big Screen Competition of the festival on Saturday night: The Arab, the fiction feature debut by documentary maker Malek Bensma\u00efl (Checks and Balances<\/a>, Alienations, The Battle of Algiers, a Film Within History).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie, directed by the filmmaker and written by him and Jacques Fieschi, reframes an unnamed figure from the book, a murdered man who is simply referred to as The Arab throughout the novel. In the film, his name is Moussa, and his story is told through the testimony of his aging brother Haroun to a journalist, making the film an exploration of memory, identity, and colonialism, given that Algeria was a French colony for\u00a0132 years\u00a0until 1962.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Arab also references the\u00a0Algerian Civil War, known in the country\u00a0as the\u00a0Black Decade\u00a0or The Dirty War, which was fought between the\u00a0Algerian government\u00a0and Islamist\u00a0rebel groups from 1992 until 2002.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Arab is loosely based on the 2013 novel The Meursault Investigation by Algerian writer Kamel Daoud. Meursault is the narrator of Camus\u2019 The Stranger. The film shows Haroun recounting his version of what happened and how it reshaped his own life and that of the brothers\u2019 mother. It is a murder mystery without clear or easy answers.<\/p>\n

\n\tPalestinian actress Hiam Abbass<\/a> (Palestine 36, Munich), who is widely known for portraying Marcia Roy in the\u00a0HBO\u00a0hit drama\u00a0Succession, plays the mother in The Arab, with the film also starring Nabil Asli, Ahmed Benaissa, Dali Benssalah, Thierry Rapha\u00ebl, Brahim Derris, and Amina Ben Ismail. Production company Hikayet Films is handling sales.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring a Q&A following the world premiere of The Arab, Bensma\u00efl was asked about moving from doc to fiction film. \u201cI make no difference between documentaries and fiction,\u201d he shared via an interpreter. \u201cBut what was especially interesting in this case was to pull out features that the actors already had and to show their own political, and maybe also psychological, features. I did that in fiction the same way that I would also do it with a documentary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director also explained that he put more focus on the mother-son relationship, with an Oedipal quality to it. \u201cThe mother actually becomes enthralled by this craziness of revenge,\u201d said Bensma\u00efl. \u201cAnd what is very interesting is that there\u2019s a parallel with the history of Algeria.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Albert Camus\u2019 novel The Stranger\u00a0(L\u2019\u00e9tranger) recently got a cinema adaptation, under the same title, by French director Fran\u00e7ois…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,150583,150584,150585,718,150586,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-403215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-hiam-abbass","10":"tag-iffr","11":"tag-iffr-2026","12":"tag-international","13":"tag-international-film-festival-rotterdam","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}