BERLIN (AP) \u2014 A surprising and touching Afghan political rom-com that is said to feature the first ever on-screen kiss in an Afghan movie opens the 76th Berlin Film Festival Thursday.<\/p>\n
Set in a Kabul newsroom in 2021, with the Taliban on the cusp of returning to power, \u201cNo Good Men\u201d tells the workplace love story of camerawoman Naru, separated from her cheating husband and struggling to keep custody of her young son while trying to build a career in a male dominated industry and patriarchal society. <\/p>\n
Director Shahrbanoo Sadat said the kissing scene cost her lead actor three weeks before shooting began, and forced her to step into the role herself.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe joke was everyone who wanted to play Naru, they didn\u2019t want to do the kissing, I wanted to do the kissing, I didn\u2019t want to do the rest of the film,\u201d Sadat said.<\/p>\n
And it wasn\u2019t just the casting that was met with resistance. The Afghan film industry is small, she said, so the expectation is that the movie will be \u201cgood PR\u201d for the country.<\/p>\n
Sadat had her own ideas, though.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love Afghanistan, but I cannot close my eyes to patriarchy, sexism, all the big topics, and just say the good things about Afghanistan, so I\u2019m disappointing my people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Making an Afghan film in Europe, with European funding, she also felt added pressure to be a political and feminist filmmaker or make a war movie.<\/p>\n
Sadat received multiple letters of complaint from funders who said it was inappropriate for them to support a rom-com given the political situation in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me it was like, wait a minute, what? I feel offended that you feel offended about my project,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m coming from a war country, and this is my way of expressing myself, to go through the oceans of unprocessed feelings, not only personal but also historical and also social, and trying to make a lighter film.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to humanize Afghan characters and tell a story that is universal but also in Afghanistan,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
While she said she made the movie about one woman, she also made it for all the \u201cgood men\u201d in Afghanistan who are \u201cnot taking advantage of the privilege that the patriarchal society is offering them for free.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter what, they are standing next to the women in their life, I really wanted to tell them, I see you, I admire you, I respect you,\u201d she said. \u201cNow I\u2019m going to cry\u2026 because women\u2019s situation is not going to change alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA Palestinian widow finds romance in Beirut<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in the festival, French-Lebanese filmmaker Danielle Arbid also leans into romance and humor instead of war and unrest to tell the tale of a Palestinian widow who finds love in Beirut with an undocumented Sudanese man 40 years her junior.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly Rebels Win\u201d opens the Panorama section of the competition. Arbid sees it as a feminist film.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the idea that women can also fall in love at 70. It\u2019s not only old rich men who can fall in love with young women. … This is my way of thinking. I hope we are not out of the market,\u201d she joked.<\/p>\n
While she admits people in Lebanon consider her provocative for the sexual references in her films, this one has no sex \u2014 though the \u201cidea is already a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSuccession\u201d actor Hiam Abbass stars as Susanne and actor Amine Benrachid, who is himself a Sudanese-Chadian refugee, plays her love interest Osmane.<\/p>\n
Abbass, a Palestinian living in exile in France for the past 37 years, says it\u2019s no coincidence that these types of stories are setting the tone for this year\u2019s festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a mixture of a lot of things, and to the contrary of what a lot of people think, we are very rich, but not in the sense of money. We\u2019re very rich because we are very rich in humanity,\u201d said Abbass.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday if we talk about things that happen in our own country, our language is very universal and basically what we say of the world corresponds to what a lot of people live today, and what a lot of people suffer from,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Arbid said that war did not define her life when she lived in Lebanon as a teen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was obsessed about falling in love with the neighbor. I wouldn\u2019t care. And I wanted the West to see me as a human being,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to make the characters in my films human enough that you can love them and feel you can be like them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN (AP) \u2014 A surprising and touching Afghan political rom-com that is said to feature the first ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[3803,1126,1124,112,190],"class_list":{"0":"post-11412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-ap-entertainment","9":"tag-ap-world-news","10":"tag-associated-press","11":"tag-berlin","12":"tag-germany"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}