A Celebration of Human Diversity in Storytelling and Poetry since 2015
Films about obsession usually start in the before, the halcyon days of family and friends and home. A little background that helps explain the protagonist’s turn once it’s all shattered. Not in Moka, the new film by Frédéric Mermoud and adapted from the eponymous novel by Tatiana de Rosnay. We enter this one at full tilt with Diane Kramer (Emmanuelle Devos), a woman already consumed.
Mohammed Diab is a revelation of a filmmaker, maturing into his art in almost ballet-like synchronicity with the revolutionary upheavals that have marked the last 7 years in his native Egypt.
Within the first ten minutes of The Bad Batch, her social critique by way of apocalyptic fantasia, our protagonist Arlen loses both an arm and a leg to a desert-dwelling band of cannibal bodybuilders.
It’s a testament to Farhadi’s skill as a storyteller that he keeps shifting our sympathies. In the best traditions of the thriller, we get caught up in Emad’s quest for revenge despite what it does to his soul.
In a recent interview in the Spanish press, Maysaloun Hamoud sighs with exasperation – “Why would anybody think the characters, who are out partying and having a good time, are trying to escape -just because they drink and take drugs”. She protests. “The protagonists are young, that’s life, life in Tel Aviv.”