Feature film
الفهد
Nabil Maleh · 1972
Synopsis
The Leopard: in 1946, in a Syrian village, Abu Ali Shahin, a poor peasant, is stripped of his land by the agha who crushes the peasants, with the complicity of the gendarmerie post. Refusing to yield, he takes up arms and heads for the mountain, where he wages his revolt alone against the lord and the authorities who protect him. The villagers, who speak at length of their misery and of the agha's power over their resources, begin to see him as a popular hero.
Context
Nabil Maleh's first fiction feature film, shot in black and white for the state body after several years of refusals and resubmissions. It adapts the narrative that Haidar Haidar had devoted to a real rural rebel, and stars Adib Qaddoura, Ighraa, Khaled Taja and Asaad Fedda. The film pits the individual against the power that holds all the country's economic and military resources, and its ending was taken up by several filmmakers after him.
Who it is for
A feature film in Arabic, directly accessible; it sheds light on the condition of Syrian peasants in the mid-twentieth century.
Prizes and reception
Special prize at the Locarno festival in 1972; jury prize at Damascus and prize at Karlovy Vary; in 2005 the Busan festival counted it among the immortal masterpieces of Asian cinema.