Three years ago, I discovered what would become one of my favorite movies: Nabil Maleh’s The Extras (1993). The Syrian comedy-drama follows Salem, an aspiring actor who can only find work as an extra, trying to arrange a secret meeting with Nada, the girl he is courting. The two can only be together in public under the supervision of Nada’s strict family—it is against the law for unmarried couples to be alone together, and Salem does not yet have the funds to marry her. The entirety of the film takes place in the refuge of Salem’s friend’s apartment; in private for the first time, the two get to know each other intimately, albeit in constant fear of being found.

The Extras was initially banned in Syria upon release—not difficult to see why, as it clearly criticizes the country’s government at the time, though the commentary still applies to nearly all conservative societies in the Arab/Muslim world today. It was the first time I had seen an Arab arthouse film be so candid about a taboo topic, and also so open in its portrayal of sexual desire; through fantasy sequences we see Salem’s imagination run wild before Nada arrives, and how absurd his expectations are compared to the shy, nervous girl who knocks at the door. The most striking thing to me was the writing, brought to life by wonderful actors Bassam Kousa and Samar Sami. In the claustrophobic two-hour exchange, we understand their character’s awkwardness, excitement, paranoia, shame, love, frustration, and desire. Maleh’s screenplay helps us empathize with Salem navigating life as a man, Nada’s perspective as a woman, and how the two are ultimately operating as extras in the playing field of society.

Upon finishing the film, I was over the moon, quickly giving it five stars on Letterboxd before copying the link to send it to a friend. I say ‘link’ because I watched The Extras in four separate parts on YouTube dot com, in 480p with English subtitles. Lauded by Arab cinema experts but unknown to most cinephiles, I felt as if I had dusted off a rare jewel in a hidden treasure chest. I was wondering how different my viewing experience would be if the film had a proper restoration, until I found that it had been removed from the platform entirely. A while later it came back in one full upload, still with dogshit video and audio quality, but that brief period of limbo bamboozled me. I could no longer recommend it to friends because it was found nowhere else. Was it destined to be another entry in the list of sublime films forgotten to time? What about all the other Arab films that I hadn’t seen or even heard of, waiting for me to find them? If only there was a company that could come to my rescue, one that prided itself on licensing, distributing, and restoring…hold on let me check their website description…“important classic and contemporary cinema from around the world”?

The Criterion Collection is a staple of modern cinephile culture, with a cult-like following by those who consider the company arbiters of taste. I was for a period also one of these people, and I still find excitement when a film I love is anointed with a shiny new Criterion edition box set cover (I’m still itching to get the Moonstruck Blu-ray whenever I get spare cash and a DVD player). The Criterion Channel, though not the focus of this piece, has featured some lovely Arab films in the past on their platform—while writing this they announced a lineup of Youssef Chahine films streaming this August!—but if a film doesn’t have a proper physical edition that can be purchased when a streaming window ends, then I personally don’t consider it a protected or preserved film. And in the over 1000 films protected and preserved by the Criterion Collection in the past four decades, only four hail from in and around the Arab world: Battle of the Algiers (directed by an Italian), The Other Side of Hope (a Finnish production from a Finnish director, following in part a Syrian refugee in Helsinki), The Secret of the Grain (a French production, set in France, about a French-Arab family), and the Moroccan music documentary Trances (the only film here to be produced entirely in its home country, and completely in the Arabic language). In the one hundred-year history of Middle Eastern and North African cinema, with countries spanning two continents, a combined population of nearly 500 million people, and an innumerable amount of talented filmmakers deserving of recognition, only four films, and only two directors of Arab descent, have been deemed worthy.

The Collection has been called out for its lack of diversity in the past: in 2020, The New York Times published the article How the Criterion Collection Crops Out African-American Directors, detailing how, at the time, only four filmmakers of African American descent were included. The majority of entries into the Collection are indeed quite local, with a bias towards American, European, and East Asian film. This has changed slightly, particularly since the company began collaborating with Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project, where “infrequently screened films from regions generally ill equipped to preserve their own cinema history” are restored for purchase in a collector’s set—this is how Trances (1981) was acquired. And while this is great, I can’t help but notice that this method of inclusion puts less emphasis on the individual auteur and more on the WCP itself; if you want one film, you have to get the box set with five more.

Now, there might be an earnest attempt and intention behind the scenes at Criterion to officially dive into Arab cinema. Maybe they have a long list of films they’d like to acquire; maybe they’ve had a few Zoom calls with a distributor and weren’t able to get the rights to a title. But I have a sinking feeling that the real reason for the absence of Arab auteurs in the Collection winds down to simple oversight. Arab art is just not a priority. It isn’t to a lot of Western film institutions, but it’s disappointing to see that a company that claims to be dedicated to cinema preservation on a worldwide scale is no different.

The origin and evolution of Arab cinema is an incredibly dense topic, varying from nation to nation. Each country has its own batch of auteurs and cinema movements relative to their unique histories. This only makes the preservation of films from Arabic-speaking countries more essential. It can be a difficult field to navigate, but to that I say, isn’t that the fun part of your job? Finding an unknown classic, restoring it with care, and making it accessible to people you know will love it? I imagine there also must be a sense of duty to give voice to the voiceless. This is a time where Arabs in their home countries, Palestine, Sudan, Yemen, and the like, are facing death and displacement, while their diasporas face persecution. Art can be used as a resource to help safeguard their legacies, spread awareness, and formulate understanding. What can be said about a film company that does not prioritize this for all spheres of cinema?

I won’t make excuses, but even I had to come to know the cinema of my people through pointed research. Maybe this situation requires some hand-holding—if it’s movie suggestions you need, I will offer them to you. A caveat: I am not an expert, just a brat with her thinking cap on. There are some films on this list that I haven’t even seen but know from word-of-mouth (why haven’t I seen them? Because they’re not easily accessible! That’s the whole issue here.) There’s also no way I’ll be able to list everything, so I will be limiting my suggestions to two to three films per nation, with a focus on auteurs both old and new, and the occasional box set idea.

Since we started in Syria with The Extras, which I’ve already made a case for, the next place to look would be the work of the masterful Mohammad Malas. Having helmed both documentaries and narrative work like many Arab auteurs, his most acclaimed work is the autobiographical narrative feature The Night (1992). The film is set in Quneitra, Malas’ now largely destroyed hometown, and mirrors his real life. The film’s protagonist tries to honor the death of his father, a resistance fighter for Palestine, by following in his footsteps. He and his mother reflect on their personal tragedies through abstract storytelling, deliberately not mythologizing the suffering of the family or their people. In recent years, Syria has been mostly known for its output of documentaries, and For Sama (2019) is as worthy a film as any. Director and subject Waad al-Kateab films five years of her life during the uprisings in Aleppo, from her marriage to the birth of her daughter, Sama. Waad struggles with the decision to leave Syria for her daughter’s life or to stay after so much sacrifice.

Heading slightly west from Syria to Lebanon, chances are, if anyone has seen an Arab film from the past decade, it’s likely Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum (2018). Zain, a twelve-year-old boy from the slums of Beirut, attempts to sue his parents for child neglect; through flashbacks we learn about the boy’s life and experiences that lead him to the courtroom. Capernaum won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and went on to become the highest-grossing Arabic language film of all time, cementing Labaki’s status as a foremost voice in the Arab film industry.

Speaking of Cannes, the first Arab woman to have her film selected for the festival was Lebanese documentarian Heiny Srour. The selected picture was 1974’s The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived, a radical documentary about the 1960s guerilla movement of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf from the British. Her second and last full-length feature came ten years later in Leila and the Wolves, an experimental documentary about Leila, a Lebanese woman in London, time traveling through the 1900s and 1970s to lay bare the roles Arab women play in liberation movements. Both films center leftist and anti-colonial struggles, while highlighting the hidden yet essential role of Arab women in these struggles. Srour, who is still around at age 79, is an undeniable talent, entirely deserving of Criterion’s recognition, likely in the form of a two-disc box set with both of her incredible features.

Egyptian cinema is its own beast, what with its dense Golden Age, from the ‘40s to the ‘60s, and its ongoing output that dominates the Arab entertainment industry today. Since the classic era looms so large, why not introduce it to viewers via a three-film collectors set? Before Omar Sharif landed in Hollywood, he made tons of movies in Egypt; let’s include some of his early work, like the romantic comedy Rumor of Love co-starring Soad Hosny, and the Salah Abu Seif drama A Beginning and an Ending? If you need more star power, why not look to Sharif’s then-wife, better known as the Lady of the Arabic Screen, Faten Hamama? Her decades-spanning filmography is massive, but her most acclaimed film is certainly The Nightingale’s Prayer from 1959. Taking place in the Egyptian countryside, Hamama plays Amna, who loses her sister to an honor killing. She plots her revenge against the man who ruined her sister’s life and family’s honor, and we watch as she continuously fails, putting herself in more and more danger.

Inarguably the most well-known filmmaker from the entire region is Youssef Chahine. In a way, one can observe the progression of cinema in Egypt through his extraordinary body of work, from his start in the Golden Age to his last film in the 2000s. He has an abundance of classics like Cairo Station, The Land, and Destiny, but I’d like to zero in on Alexandria…Why? the first in a quartet of semi-autobiographical films. A departure from his musicals and melodramas of the 50s and 60s, protagonist Yehia, a stand-in for Chahine, dreams of making it big as an actor against the backdrop of World War II. Chahine’s passion for both his craft and his people is on full, loving display, of course making sure to deliver a subversive anti-war message by the end.

Chronicles of the Years of Fire from director Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina was the first, and to date only, Arab or African film to win the esteemed Palme d’Or in 1975. Composed of several “chapters”, the epic covers various events in Algeria’s history to demonstrate that the militant attacks on Red All Saints' Day in 1954 were a result of prolonged suffering under French colonization. The film is one of two Algerian productions preserved by the World Cinema Project, the other being the 1979 film La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua from filmmaker and feminist writer Assia Djebar. Mixing both narrative and documentary elements, she follows subject Lila as she returns to her mountainous hometown a decade after the Algerian war. In dialogue with other Algerian women there, Djebar compares the past and present, and how anti-colonial traditions are passed on from generation to generation.

Last year, Kaouther Ben Hania became the first Arab woman to have two of her films nominated at the Oscars—The Man Who Sold His Skin was nominated for International Feature in 2020, and Four Daughters got a nod for Best Documentary. In the latter, Ben Hania invites two professional actresses to fill in for two of Olfa’s missing daughters. This experiment gives way to intimate and revealing conversations about womanhood, rebellion, family, and the foundations of society. Ben Hania’s rise reminds me of another Tunisian female filmmaker, the late Moufida Tlatli. Her 1994 masterpiece The Silences of the Palace won the Camera d’Or at that year’s Cannes and features movie star Hend Sabry in her acting debut. Alia grew up in a palace where her mother was a mistress and servant. Wandering through the abandoned palace as a grown woman, she pieces together memories of her mother, and the exploitation she was faced with because of her gender and class.

A few years ago, on the Criterion Channel, in fact, I watched Maryam Touzani’s directorial debut, Adam (2019). The film follows two women in Casablanca, the pregnant and unmarried Samia, reluctantly taken in by a widowed baker, Abla. Both women are in difficult periods of their lives, but come to support and nurture one another. I was struck by Touzani’s sensitive storytelling, and how it never once felt that she was catering to the Western eye. Her most recent effort, The Blue Caftan (2022), takes the same qualities from Adam and doubles it. A married couple runs a traditional caftan store in Morocco: Halim is a closeted gay man, and his wife Mina keeps his secret. As a new apprentice arrives and Mina’s health begins to deteriorate, a moving tale of love and devotion unravels, bound to leave you in tears.

Morocco is also home to some fascinating and experimental documentaries. Banned and lost for decades, Mostafa Derkaoui’s About Some Meaningless Events (1972) follows Derkaoui and his crew as they wander the city, chatting with passersby about their relationships with cinema, when a crime is suddenly committed. Deciding to investigate, the filmmakers begin to reflect on their own role in the creation of cinema. In The Mother of All Lies (2023), filmmaker Asmae El Moudir looks into why her family hardly has any personal photos; she and her father recreate her childhood street with clay figurines. Interviewing her various neighbors and family members, she uncovers her family’s secrets and the lies she was told in childhood.

In Sudan, the cinema industry has just started to sprout, with a limited but still lovely assortment of films to consider. You Will Die at Twenty (2019) is Amjad Abu Alala’s acclaimed first feature, a fable-like story of a newborn boy in a Sudanese village told by a mystic that he will die at age twenty. Flashforward to the boy’s nineteenth year, anticipating death as he finally begins to taste life. The recent Goodbye Julia (2023) was the first Sudanese film to be selected at Cannes, taking place in Khartoum in the last years of Sudan as a united country. After covering up the murder of a Southern Sudanese man, a retired singer from the north takes in the deceased’s widow as a maid in an attempt to atone for her guilt—but things don’t go as planned.

Palestinian filmmakers, through fiction or documentary, have always used cinema as a tool to communicate the plight of their land and people. The plethora of documentaries from Palestine include landmark works such as Jenin, Jenin (2003) and 5 Broken Cameras (2011). In the former, Palestinian actor Mohammed Bakri enters a Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin to uncover the truth about what happened at the “Battle of Jenin” the year prior. Through intimate and unvarnished testimony, residents allege that the Israeli Occupation Forces had committed a massacre with over 500 casualties, gone unrecognized by major human rights organizations. In 5 Broken Cameras, Emad Burnat documents his life through five different cameras, from the birth of his son, the seizure of his village’s land, peaceful activists attacked by the army, and more everyday atrocities. Each one of the cameras used to document these images is in some way destroyed.

Narrative fiction from Palestine also serves to impart truth to the viewer. Adapted from revolutionary author Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun, Tawfiq Saleh’s 1972 film The Dupes follows three Palestinian men exiled from their land in 1948, trying to make their way to Kuwait. A staggering and suspenseful picture starring non-professional actors, the film was actually restored by the World Cinema Project, making it an easy choice for a future Criterion release. The Dupes was shot in Syria and portrays the struggle of Palestinian diaspora, but Michel Khleifi’s 1995 film Tale of the Three Jewels was the first film to be wholly shot and produced in Gaza. Twelve-year-old Yussef’s father is in prison, and his brother is on the run from the Israeli army. He meets Aida, a pretty girl his age, and tries to win her over; she says she’ll offer her heart only if he helps her find her grandma’s lost jewels. Khleifi mixes childlike wonder with realism in a picture absolutely deserving of a wider audience.

Visionary Palestinian auteur Elia Suleiman has an immediately recognizable style, and all four of his feature films—Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996), Divine Intervention (2002), The Time That Remains (2009), and It Must Be Like Heaven (2019)—in my opinion, should be sold together in a collector’s set. If I had to choose only one, it would be The Time That Remains (2009). An absolutely essential work, Suleiman infuses memories of his family, neighbors, teachers, and friends into each scene to portray the evolution of daily life for Palestinians in Nazareth from the start of the occupation in 1948 to the present day. His use of space, color and sound echoes the work of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton, resulting in a silent triumph of a film that everyone should have on their watchlist.

I hope that, using this very long but still very incomplete list, someone at the Criterion Collection, or even an everyday cinephile, comes away with an understanding of the possibilities that exist when it comes to preserving Arab cinema. There are so many creative ways to approach packaging and distributing these titles, and if I’m any proof, there is a market for it. There is so much to appreciate and even more to look forward to, especially with the boom in the industry in the past few years—just look to the Arabian Gulf and the upcoming filmmakers forging their own paths. It would be amazing if our great influential filmmakers, many who are still alive today, got to have their films recognized with a Criterion edition—not having one doesn’t diminish or lessen the caliber of their work, but it would bring their talents to a wider audience. That is all that we as film lovers can hope to do.

P.S. If anyone is interested in watching Arab cinema in the appropriate places online, I implore you to use specially-curated streaming services like Aflamuna and Shasha Movies. solidaritycinema.com has an abundance of selections from the Arab world, and there is an assortment of films also available on Netflix if you search “Arabic Movies”. Don’t be afraid to use YouTube as a resource too—you might find your own hidden gem, like I did with The Extras.

Does The Criterion Collection Care About Arab Cinema?

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