Joseph Fahim

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Sep 25, 2026 Visually and conceptually, these images owe more to the lonely New Yorkers found in the paintings of Edward Hopper: disparate individuals isolated from reality, from themselves and from the rest of the world. Go to Full Review NAZA (2026) 100% - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Aug 28, 2026 At best, the film can be seen as a love letter to Lebanese cinema; but given the fact that independent cinema was never popular in Lebanon, and was never part of the collective consciousness, Daher’s flimsy, sloppy thesis doesn’t hold true. Go to Full Review Do You Love Me (2025) 80% - -

Joseph Fahim BFI Jul 21, 2026 [Ben] Rivers has produced his most hopeful feature to date: a film suggesting that, to see, feel, and absorb this newly refurbished world, one must adopt unknowing eyes. Go to Full Review Mare's Nest (2025) 92% - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Jun 29, 2026 Asad is a work undone by glaring contradictions: a historical drama that shies away from the very particularities of history; an ambitious epic that never transcends the conventions and cliches of its frustratingly simplistic narrative Go to Full Review Asad (2026) - - - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Jun 29, 2026 Half-hearted attempts at humour, alongside perfunctory subplots involving murdered fathers and fractured families, do little to relieve the suffocating mechanicalness of the proceedings. Go to Full Review 7 Dogs (2026) 40% - -

Joseph Fahim BFI Jun 22, 2026 Koberidze’s use of the Sony Ericsson camera encourages a childlike mode of perception: encountering mundane imagery with renewed curiosity, assembling meaning from fragments of a world whose wonder have been dulled by overexposure to slick digital images. Go to Full Review Dry Leaf (2025) 84% - -

Joseph Fahim BFI May 18, 2026 Eagles emerges unmistakably as a work of dissent: an angry portrait of an industry exploited and deformed by a regime determined to preserve its power. Go to Full Review Eagles of the Republic (2025) 76% - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye May 8, 2026 Cohen’s naivety and wide-eyed perspective can occasionally test one’s patience, yet the film ultimately serves as a revealing meditation on the limits of coexistence within Israel’s current political reality. Go to Full Review Far from Maine (2026) - - - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye May 8, 2026 For Shuster-Eliassi, genuine cohabitation is impossible without meaningful power-sharing - an arrangement she argues Israel has neither pursued nor permitted. Go to Full Review Coexistence, My Ass! (2025) 92% - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye May 8, 2026 Yes ultimately registers less as a forensic autopsy of post–7 October Israel than as a grand act of effrontery - an abrasive, knowingly grandiose gesture that at times feels more performative than penetrating. Go to Full Review Yes! (2025) 92% - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Mar 20, 2026 The film’s most impressive achievement lies in its patient and meticulous demonstration of how power is seized and sustained; how fear remains the most effective tool for mobilising communities. Go to Full Review Salvation (2026) - - - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Mar 20, 2026 Hammad’s protagonists are defeated, deflated characters, too exhausted and too ill-equipped to carve a tangible path out of their eternal purgatory. Go to Full Review Safe Exit (2026) - - - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Mar 20, 2026 Bouzid’s vapid, one-note "us versus a bigoted society" discourse soon grows tiresome, particularly as she fails to interrogate, or even mask, her own orientalist gaze. Go to Full Review In A Whisper (2026) 93% - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Mar 20, 2026 Arbid curiously opts for a largely straightforward approach, resulting in a potent and involving, if rudimentary, drama that adheres closely to the Fassbinder original without perceptive sociological insight. Go to Full Review Only Rebels Win (2026) - - - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Mar 20, 2026 Catak places the viewer through the wringer, posing difficult questions about the fragile boundary between pragmatic survival and moral compromises when making art under authoritarian rule. Go to Full Review Yellow Letters (2026) 86% - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Mar 20, 2026 Rather than foregrounding the overt political rhetoric that has shaped much post-7 October Palestinian cinema, Khatib gravitates toward the elemental experience of life on the battered side of war. Go to Full Review Chronicles from the Siege (2026) - - - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Jan 23, 2026 Self-importantly bleak and exasperatingly formulaic, Irkalla is the bastard child of Capernaum: a regressive piece of misery porn replete with child labour, terrorist plots, and underage prostitution. Go to Full Review Irkalla: Gilgamesh's Dream (2025) - - - -

Joseph Fahim BFI Jan 16, 2026 The film’s unmodulated use of the child’s calls leaves space only for enforced sympathy rather than reflective distance. The aestheticisation of actual events through such a synthetic narrative ultimately denies Hind individuality. Go to Full Review The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025) 93% - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Dec 21, 2025 The patchy, uneven performances fail to bring the emotion of the story to the fore. And the overstuffed script never takes the unpredictable left turns it constantly hints at. Go to Full Review Cotton Queen (2025) - - - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Dec 21, 2025 Love is hard work: a series of difficult compromises, Aris suggests, and living in the permanent purgatory that is Lebanon certainly compounds these compromises. Go to Full Review A Sad and Beautiful World (2025) 100% - -