Cinema
The Dupes
المخدوعون
Tawfik Saleh · 1972
Synopsis
In 1958, ten years after the Nakba, three Palestinians of different generations, Abu Qais, Assaad and Marwan, destitute refugees, want to reach Kuwait to find work. In Basra, they put themselves in the hands of a Palestinian smuggler, Abu Khaizaran, who offers to get them across the border hidden in the empty tank of his lorry. The crossing of the desert begins under the August sun.
Context
Tewfik Saleh had sought in vain to film this subject in Egypt as early as 1964; the Syrian film organisation accepted his project in January 1971. The film adapts a short story by Ghassan Kanafani published in 1963, itself drawn from a real case of emigrants who died in a water tank. Shot in black and white, partly in Iraq, it is banned in several Arab countries for what it says about the silence of the regimes; Kanafani is assassinated a few months later. Restored in 2023, it has been shown in New York and London.
Who it is for
A film in Arabic with subtitles, with a tense narrative. Kanafani's very short novella can be read in an hour and complements the film.
Prizes and reception
Tanit d'or at the Carthage Film Days in 1972, in competition at Moscow in 1973; regarded as one of the great films of Arab cinema.