Middle East Eye

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 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 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) 82% - -

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 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% - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Sep 5, 2025 Part affecting tale of female bonding, part perceptive reflection on evolving intergenerational relationships, and part an incisive dissection of class and race in the kingdom, Ameen’s brilliant picture is one of the most daring Saudi films ever made. Go to Full Review Hijra (2025) - - - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Aug 22, 2025 Canto Due remains as light as a feather; a diverting wish-fulfillment fronted by a maddingly passive, soulless protagonist. Kechiche no longer has anything remotely fresh or noteworthy to say about the Arab experience in France. Go to Full Review Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due (2025) - - - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Aug 22, 2025 Gaza has endured plenty of pain, Aljafari emphasises, but it never lost its humanity, its joy, its resilience. Aljafari captures this world so vividly, so tenderly, so unassumingly in his futile search for a piece of himself forever lost in detention. Go to Full Review With Hasan in Gaza (2025) 100% - -

Joseph Fahim Middle East Eye Aug 16, 2025 Hadi paints a stark portrait of a dog-eat-dog world with fizzling morality. His political commentary is pronounced, finding no difference between Hussein’s megalomania and the West’s casual ambivalence towards Iraqi civilians. Go to Full Review The President's Cake (2025) 99% - -