This article is part of a series on films at DIFF 2007.

Well, the time has come to separate the best from the rest. For me, the festival peaked with the world premiere of “Captain Abu Raed” – the first Jordanian feature film in a rather long number of years.

Let me tell you, all those decades upon decades were certainly worth the wait.

Director, writer, and producer Amin Matalqa described this film as a “fable,” which is probably as close as one can get to its essence without giving too much away. The hero of the story, portrayed by veteran Nadim Sawalha (you’ve seen him everywhere from “Syriana” to “The Nativity Story” as of late), is a janitor who gets mistaken for an airline pilot on account of a hat fished out of the trash in Amman’s Queen Alia International Airport.

Abu Raed is an older man who leads a quiet life, having conversations with his dead wife’s portrait and spending his evenings with only a cup of tea for company. This is a man who had dreams once; you can still see something of them in his kind, keen gaze, alongside past calamities and defeats, all equally ground down by the thievish passage of time.

It is the exicted attention of his humble neighborhood’s children that inspires Abu Raed to assume the role of storyteller and sage; as he recounts tales of the fictional adventures of the man he might have been, we discover that the man he is is not a whole lot different. Abu Raed can still be a hero, janitor’s uniform and all.

Thanks to the editing of obscenely young Laith Majali (who is also one of the producers) and the brilliant cinematography of Reinhart Peschke, the movie has a lush, gorgeous look: the light alternates between laving like honey and casting inky shadows on faces and streets. The city of Amman exists as a separate character here, a living landscape transversed with human lives.

This is a family-friendly (I hate that horrible adjective, but there it is) film that nevertheless deals with the darker side of life. Domestic abuse, classism, societal pressure, and senseless tragedy figure heavily in the plot. Not all characters are redeemed, and not all loose ends are tied up with pretty bows. While neither edgy nor gritty (more adjectives I despise), this movie lingers with you like a beloved childhood story whose undertones continue to unfold in one’s mind long after the original encounter.

If great books cannot be read, only re-read (this is according to Vladimir Nabokov, a good authority on the subject), then great movies ought to be re-watched, and “Captain Abu Raed” is no exception. This movie will open in Jordan in February of 2008, and it will make its way to Sundance earlier next year as well. I’d love to chase it all over the globe, but will have to sustain myself with memories in the meantime.

If you need a point of reference, I would say this movie is a bit like “Monsieur Ibrahim” – only more engrossing. It’s an urban romance both humourous and melancholic, and a great antidote to pretentious art-films and sickly-sweet family dramas combined.

It is also hopefully the start to a new era of Jordanian filmmaking. Enough of Jordan being solely the backdrop to foreign-made films, I say. While “Captain Abu Raed” is a standalone achievement of tremendous magnitude, it could also be the start of something equally terrific.

It’s good news all around, at last.

Tags: film, jordan, reviews