Jordan News

After the outcry and sharp criticism, the Egyptian director Mohamed Diab announced the suspension of any screenings of the movie Amira.

Diab said in a statement posted on his Facebook page, at dawn today, Thursday, “Since the beginning of the film’s showing in September 2021 at the Venice Festival, which was followed by two shows in the Arab world at the El Gouna and Carthage festivals, and was watched by thousands of Arab, Palestinian and international audiences, the consensus has always been that The film portrays the issue of prisoners in a positive and humane way, and clearly criticizes the occupation.

The statement stated: “The film’s family fully understood the sensitivity of the issue of sperm smuggling and the sanctity of the Children of Freedom, and for this reason the decision was to declare that the story of the film is fictional and cannot happen. All the children have their lineage confirmed. The smuggling methods remain ambiguous) The family of the film did not leave the matter to interpretation, but confirmed with this sentence that the film is fictional and that the true method of smuggling is unknown, and that the age of the heroine in the film is 18 years logically inconsistent with the beginning of resorting to sperm smuggling in 2012 “.

Diab said that the drama of the film by changing the sperm (between the Palestinian prisoner and the Israeli soldier) came to pose an existential and philosophical question “about the essence of human belief and whether he would make the same choices if he were born as another person. The film, once again, is biased towards Palestine. The heroine, Amira, chooses to be Palestinian and chooses to side with the just cause. The film denounces and condemns the occupation practices that are explicitly referred to in the crime covered by the film.”

While he demanded the establishment of a specialized committee by the prisoners and their families to watch and discuss the film, Diab affirmed that the film’s family “understands the anger experienced by many over what they consider to be an insult to the prisoners and their families, and it is a national anger that we understand, but we would have liked to watch the film before judging it by transferring or cutting it.”

At the end of the statement, he announced the suspension of all scheduled screenings of the film, given that “the lofty goal for which the work was made cannot be achieved at the expense of the feelings of the prisoners and their families who were hurt by the blurry image that was woven around the film.”

He also called for the establishment of a specialized committee by the prisoners and their families to watch and discuss the film.

The events of the film revolve around the story of the young woman, “Amira” (Tara Aboud), who discovers after many years that she was not born with a sperm smuggled from her father, who was imprisoned in the occupation prisons, but rather was replaced by another for an Israeli soldier.

The angry campaign against the tape was launched after it was shown at the opening of the twelfth session of the “Karama for Human Rights Films” festival in Amman, last Sunday, to launch the hashtag “#Withdraw_Prince_Film”, which received a wide interaction on social networking sites.