Joseph Fahim
Tomatometer-approved critic
Joseph Fahim is an Egyptian film critic and programmer. He is the Arab delegate of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, the 2018 curator of London's Safar Film Fest, a former member of Berlin Critics' Week and the ex director of programming of the Cairo International Film Festival. His film programs have been showcased in Europe, the Middle East and U.S. He co-authored various books on Arab cinema and has written for numerous outlets around the world, including Middle East Eye, Middle East Institute, BBC, Mubi, Verite, Al Monitor, Al Jazeera, and The National (U.A.E.). To date, his writings have been translated into six different languages.
Movies reviews only
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Golda (2023) |
Because Golda cannot be too complex in order to attract a mass audience, the diverse reasons behind the conflict are overlooked as Nattiv roots the dispute in the Arab refusal to recognise Israel and their threats to wipe out the Zionist state.
- Middle East Eye
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| Posted Mar 07, 2023
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Under the Sky of Damascus (2023) |
The film is essentially a collection of straightforward testimonials grouped in dispiritingly artless fashion and the Syrian capital proves to be its biggest asset.
- Middle East Eye
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| Posted Mar 07, 2023
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The Burdened (2023) |
Gamal mostly frames his characters in wide shots, letting his camera linger on Aden’s cluttered exteriors after a stretch of dialogue ends, giving viewers the space to dwell on an ailing city on the brink.
- Middle East Eye
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| Posted Mar 07, 2023
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The Teachers’ Lounge (2023) |
Although the Turkish student is a periphery character, he is the catalyst of a multilayered and immensely tense drama mirroring a society that is befuddled and overly sensitive about its race and class issues. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Mar 07, 2023
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Seven Winters in Tehran (2023) |
Intermingling interviews with Jabbari’s family members and former inmates with audio and video footage smuggled out of Iran, Niederzoll delivers a damning indictment of Iran’s patriarchal establishment.
- Middle East Eye
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Opponent (2023) |
Opponent is foremost an astute study of a man who is nowhere near as resourceful as others expect him to be. The gay subtext adds an extra dimension to a gripping narrative that never descends into sensationalism.
- Middle East Eye
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| Posted Mar 02, 2023
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Queens (2022) |
A watchable picture that squanders the electrifying possibilities offered by its genre, Queens ultimately suffers from Benkiran’s reluctance to take chances and instead occupy a middle ground free of invention. This is a movie that never takes off.
- Middle East Eye
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| Posted Oct 06, 2022
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The Damned Don't Cry (2022) |
The Damned Don't Cry is an intrepid exploration of the mystery that is the Arab mother-son bond. Selim and Fatima-Zahra have a co-dependent relationship typified by years of unshakable resentment and disappointment towards one another. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Oct 06, 2022
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Beyond the Wall (2022) |
Bafflingly thin on characterisation, the lack of sympathy for these awfully one-dimensional characters is augmented by Mohammadzadeh’s irritatingly one-noted self-important performance and Habibi’s lack of range.
- Middle East Eye
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| Posted Oct 06, 2022
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Without Her (2022) |
When Roya’s eye surgery strikes her with cryptic blackouts, the film swiftly turns into a Brian De Palma-like pulp noir about the slipperiness of identity, suburban ennui and suppressed womanhood.
- Middle East Eye
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| Posted Oct 06, 2022
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World War III (2022) |
World War III is, by turns, a character study, an examination of destructive class disjunction, a highly intense anecdote of scorching love, and a parody of commercial Iranian filmmaking. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Oct 06, 2022
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No Bears (2022) |
With No Bears, Panahi reaches the point of self-reckoning, questioning the social validity of his work and confronting the limitations of art. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Oct 06, 2022
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Our Ties (2022) |
The problems of the family members - miscalculated choices, lack of consideration, self-centeredness - are of their own making: a privilege gifted by class ascension.
- Middle East Eye
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| Posted Sep 23, 2022
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For My Country (2022) |
Nadia and her sons are lower-middle class immigrants who must ascend the class ladder to gain their full rights. In France, class does not just bring wealth and privilege, it’s the key for earning equality, crucial for becoming fully French.
- Middle East Eye
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| Posted Sep 23, 2022
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Athena (2022) |
Athena is not about the awfully familiar narratives of a populace with unchanging conditions: it’s a visceral jolt aimed at the senses, an immersive experience set in an open prison with no escape. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Sep 23, 2022
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Dirty Difficult Dangerous (2022) |
Dirty is a strange beast: a melodrama conceived as a deadpan comedy, peppered with social commentary. Despite the palpable passion on display, the film doesn’t succeed on any of those fronts - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Sep 06, 2022
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The Last Queen (2022) |
The Last Queen attempts to give Algeria its lost myths in other words, but its didactic slant leaves no room for contemplation as the message drowns in the sturdy mechanisms of the plot.
- Middle East Eye
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| Posted Sep 06, 2022
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Nezouh (2022) |
Nezouh is too unenterprising, too exasperatingly modest, to inject a new-found urgency to a subject that has been milked the past 11 years. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Sep 06, 2022
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Father's Day (2022) |
Fathers Day is a meditation on the lingering scars of genocide that are laid bare by vain men too insecure to give up their authorities; on toxic fatherhood directed by egotism and self-entitlement.
- The Africa Report
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| Posted Mar 05, 2022
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One Year, One Night (2022) |
Lacuestas intention of conveying the long-lasting trauma of his characters - which is predictably overdramatised and graceless - is carried out at a cost. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Mar 01, 2022
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Until Tomorrow (2022) |
Asgari's Tehran is a decadent metropolis where freedom can only be attained by class privilege. Fereshteh has money, but she does not have the connections or resources that will allow her to live the way she wishes.
- Middle East Eye
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| Posted Mar 01, 2022
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Shall I Compare You to a Summer's Day? (2022) |
By extracting pop songs from their heteronormative heritage and casting them in a new queer light, Hassan has pulled out an act of resistance - an act of self-actualisation at the front and centre of a culture that continues to punish homosexuality. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Mar 01, 2022
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Sonne (2022) |
Avoiding cliches surrounding Middle Eastern youth in Europe, Sonne is a rich, multilayered study of teens torn between a confusing reality and an ill-defined virtual existence. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Mar 01, 2022
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Black Medusa (2021) |
An impressionistic revenge fable gorgeously shot in black and white, 'Black Medusa' is an angry shriek; a brazenly amoral meditation on violence and the righteousness of retribution, and a moody panorama of a lawless Tunisian capital. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Jan 27, 2022
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Let It Be Morning (2021) |
An intimate, delicate yet incisive multi-character comedic drama of classism, communal power dynamics, the broken dream of freedom, and the struggle for identity. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Nov 07, 2021
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Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege (2021) |
Little Palestine is, by turn, expansive yet intimate; harrowing yet hopeful; occasionally aloof yet intensely moving. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Sep 26, 2021
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The Sea Ahead (2021) |
An impressionistic, emotionally subdued portrait of an aimless generation traversing a dying city bound to disappear. The titular sea, which has been veiled by the unpopulated skyscrapers, becomes a symbol for this disappearing Beirut. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Sep 26, 2021
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Costa Brava, Lebanon (2021) |
Akl keeps her viewers at arm's length from her characters, never penetrating their psyche. Costa Brava is a cold, affectionless film, too distracted with properly weaving its myriad disharmonious strands to deliver an emotionally engaging story. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Sep 18, 2021
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You Resemble Me (2021) |
Amer's directorial ideology is alarmingly deterministic; she paints her characters as oppressed victims of a cannibalistic, white France hell-bent on denying its Arab women from any choices. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Sep 18, 2021
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Zalava (2021) |
With Massoud himself gradually questioning his unbending convictions, Amiri does not present a concrete or clear stance on the subject, depriving his treatise of the depth and complexity it thoroughly needs. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Sep 18, 2021
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Land of Dreams (2021) |
Neshat squanders its promising fantastical premise over a storyline devoid of invention, insight or genuine intellectual curiosity. Its political immaturity is maddening; its gaudy visuals are exhausting; its glib humour is off-putting. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Sep 11, 2021
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Amira (2021) |
Amira is a highly contrived, ridiculous melodrama seeping with endless implausible details that rob the story of any credibility it may have had. The biggest crime of the film though is its portrayal of Palestinian society. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Sep 11, 2021
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Mr. Bachmann and His Class (2021) |
All immigrant kids strive to transcend the socio-economic barriers and make better lives for themselves; all are struggling in figuring out what constitutes a home... and what a home means. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Aug 18, 2021
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Ballad of a White Cow (2021) |
A competent and undeniably engaging melodrama with superb acting and meticulous mise-en-scene, the well-trodden themes of guilt and retribution are nonetheless awfully familiar. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Aug 18, 2021
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Death of a Virgin and the Sin of Not Living (2021) |
Barbari mistakes fatalism for realism, stuffing his film with cliched, melodramatic treatment of sex work and victimised women that go against the grain of his thematic intentions. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Aug 18, 2021
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As I Want (2021) |
As I Want is a film seeping with rage; at the self-entitled men who control the public spaces beyond reproach; at the educational and religious institutions; at the negligent political establishment that allowed this plague to mushroom. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Aug 18, 2021
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Miguel's War (2021) |
Taking cues from Shirley Clarke's "Portrait of Jason" (1967), Raheb takes a no-holds barred approach, not flinching from asking tough questions while not compromising the dignity of her subject. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Aug 18, 2021
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The Dissident (2020) |
All the tackled political issues are dumbed down to fit a western binary of good and evil. The Arab Spring was great for the region but Saudi Arabia demolished it across the Middle East for fear it would encourage its own citizens to revolt. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Aug 06, 2021
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Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020) |
A deeply moving, remarkably articulate plea for recognition and for honoring those lives that were lost in vain; a reminder of how apathetic the international community and global organizations can be. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Aug 06, 2021
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Kingdom of Silence (2020) |
Kingdom of Silence pinpoints how such inherent cynicism defines America's toxic relationship with the world's biggest oil supplier (Riyadh would have calculated that Washington would be unlikely to retaliate against Khashoggi's death). - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Aug 06, 2021
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Memory Box (2021) |
Few Arab filmmakers are able to craft scenes of such pure emotive power - wistful images imbued with the pain of displacement and loss. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Aug 06, 2021
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Gaza Mon Amour (2020) |
Quiet in tone and emotionally restrained with a washed-out colour palette, Gaza is worlds apart from the brothers' loud, ostentatious debut: more mature, more finely calibrated, more aesthetically enterprising. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Aug 06, 2021
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The Wasteland (2020) |
What we ultimately get is esoteric imagery and stiff posturing swaying between pretentiousness and self-seriousness without offering anything illuminating or substantial at the end. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Aug 06, 2021
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Honey Cigar (2020) |
At 100 minutes, Honey Cigar, feels truncated. Relationships are suddenly cut short and resumed with insufficient conviction; while plenty of the unfolding action is rushed and never given room to breathe - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Aug 06, 2021
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200 Meters (2020) |
Nayfeh chooses not to take risks. "200 Meters" ultimately feels underwhelming; frustratingly tame, unambitious and strangely safe. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Aug 06, 2021
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Limbo (2020) |
Sharrock touches upon a fundamental aspect of the Middle Eastern relationship to Europe and the West: the emotional agony of the wait; the realisation that one's destiny is not in one's hands. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Jul 31, 2021
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Souad (2020) |
Few other Egyptian films have ventured to present life outside Cairo as evocatively as Souad does; few films have ventured to capture the unique syntax of everyday chatter as naturally and perceptively. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Jul 16, 2021
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Zanka Contact (2020) |
Every scene brims with swagger, coolness and energy, anchored by fierce, uninhibited performances from its two magnetic leads. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Jul 16, 2021
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Oslo (2021) |
What on paper promises to be an insightful look at the intricate political manoeuvres that led to the botched agreement swiftly descends into a bafflingly amiable meet-cute comic-drama devoid of any complexity or depth. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Jul 16, 2021
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The Gravedigger's Wife (2021) |
Ahmed's debut feature is a work of remarkable exactness and precision: a study of the miscarried urban dream and a censure of a hollow modernity forced on a barren land with few prospects. - Middle East Eye
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| Posted Jul 16, 2021
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