Locarno 2017
Now, in the moment when we would have needed him most, Irrfan Khan has left us. He’s gone. He had been ill for the last couple of years and yet, just as with all those we deeply love and are deserving of that love, his passing was unexpected. Unwarranted. Unwanted. HIs words won’t get us out of this funk now.
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Back in 2012, I met Egyptian superstar Khaled El Nabawy at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. He was there with an Arab-American co-production and we sat down with his director and co-star during a sun filled afternoon, in an empty coffee shop inside the Emirates Palace hotel. It was an otherworldly moment that heralded the start of a beautiful friendship.
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Photo courtesy of Annemarie Jacir
I fell in love with her film 'Salt of This Sea' first, captured by its heroine Soraya, who was unapologetically woman and so perfectly angry. Then I got to interview her during the now defunct Abu Dhabi Film Festival and found her to be as wonderfully real as her film characters are. Once again, one of her films 'When I Saw You' made me dream from my cinema seat and I found its omissions from that year's Oscar race a large oversight.
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