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Arab cinema

In Papisha soon the "high energy wears off, as the story descends into repugnant cliches and orientalist pigeonholes. Meddour's world view is black and white: all men are bad, nearly all religious people are blood-thirsty monsters, and all the liberal-minded girls are valiant heroines.

There is no subtlety in her characterisations nor hint of intelligence in how she tackles Islamic radicalism, which is personified by a bunch of liberal men-hating women and women obsessed with having every girl in the country veiled. 

 On the evidence of Papicha, Meddou's world view comes over as little different from the average white Western film-maker in its antagonistic stance against non-white masculinity, a toxic feminist stance which frowns down on anyone who does not share its ideals. By a long margin, Papicha was the low point of the Arab selection at Cannes this year."

Review of seven new Arab films

 "Cannes, after all, is an awfully classist festival that segregates the press into groups defined by the number of hits their publications receive; that continues to coerce its female guests into wearing high heels for the Lumiere gala premieres; and whose line-up is largely fed by mega French distributors with enduring ties to the Cannes hierarchy."
—Joseph Fahim
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