Joseph Fahim

Egypt, Nowhere

Critic and Programmer Freelance at Rotten Tomatoes

I do a whole bunch of things in cinema as my overlong futile search for home drags on.

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Articles

Sisi's failing vision? What the 2025 Ramadan season taught us about the Arab TV landscape

1 week ago | middleeasteye.net | Joseph Fahim

Once a vehicle for Egyptian soft power, Cairo is struggling to exert its influence through its shows Underneath the Seventh Earth is a Syrian thriller about a rogue cop's involvement in the criminal underworld (Cedars Art Production) 15 April 2025 10:52 BST ago The 2025 Ramadan TV season continues to dominate cultural discourse in the Arab World even after the end of the Muslim holy month, which doubles as the premiere season for blockbuster shows in the region.
Progressive except for Palestine: Berlinale 2025 and the politics of omission

1 month ago | middleeasteye.net | Joseph Fahim

The 2024 Berlinale was the most memorable edition in the film festival’s recent history for all the wrong reasons. The initial outcry over the opening ceremony invitation for the far-right party Alternative fur Deutschland (AFD) gave way to protests over Germany’s complicity in the war on Gaza.
5 things to watch this weekend - 28 February to 2 March

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Sam Wigley |Richard Pickard |Mike Sutton |Joseph Fahim

Where’s it on? Blu-rayHere is a 1980s romcom to rank alongside Moonstruck (1987) or When Harry Met Sally (1989). Brimming with life and humour, Crossing Delancey is Joan Micklin Silver’s tale of a thirtysomething Jewish New Yorker (Amy Irving) who falls for an attractive author (Jeroen Krabbé) at the bookstore where she works. Meanwhile, her mother – keen to marry her off – sets her up on a date with a pickle salesman on the Lower East Side (Local Hero’s Peter Riegert).
Before Demi: every lead actress who has ever been nominated for a horror film

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Richard Pickard Lists |Richard Pickard |Mike Sutton |Joseph Fahim

Despite being one of the most popular genres with movie lovers, horror films have long struggled to make headway with the Academy. A visceral genre that ignites the senses, its best offerings hold up a mirror to the social order, yet scary movies are still largely overlooked in favour of the more palatable dramas and biopics which remain the ceremony’s bread and butter.
Knockouts: 5 discoveries from Berlin Film Festival 2025

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Joseph Fahim |Savina Petkova |Rachel Pronger |Lou Thomas

Director: Christine HaroutounianMaybe it helped that I watched Christine Haroutounian’s stunning debut feature literally after dreaming, having promptly fallen asleep as it started and then woken again, defences down to its hypnagogic spell.
Remembering Ahmed Adaweyah: The mutinous voice of Egypt's working class

2 months ago | middleeasteye.net | Joseph Fahim

When was the first time I heard Adaweyah? As a child of the 1980s, it’s impossible to put a finger on the exact date. The music of Egypt’s greatest shaabi singer was as ubiquitous as television: it was everywhere, for everyone, at all times. It was catchy, unwieldy, and uncommon: unbridled in its sexuality, in its weariness of a changing Cairo, in its defiance to the bourgeois norms of good taste.
Netflix's Mo season two: A case of diminishing returns

2 months ago | middleeasteye.net | Joseph Fahim

The smash hit show avoids the question of the post 7 October world but continues to deliver flashes of brilliance Mohammed Amer is the writer, producer and star of the landmark series (Netflix) 11 February 2025 10:46 GMT ago After 7 October 2023, the eyes of the Arab-American community were on Palestinian comedian Mohammed Amer and his response to the ensuing genocide in Gaza and silencing of pro-Palestinian voices.
The Brutalist: What this Oscar contender really says about the American Dream and Israel

2 months ago | middleeasteye.net | Joseph Fahim

Editor's note: The following piece includes spoilers for the plot of The BrutalistWhen Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist premiered at the Venice film festival last September, few film experts believed it could have any impact on the erratic US box office. A nearly four-hour-long immigrant drama about a Jewish architect taking refuge in 1940s Philadelphia, nothing about The Brutalist, including its cast, screamed box office gold.
How Hollywood failed to change Trump’s America and what Arab artists must now do

Nov 28, 2024 | middleeasteye.net | Joseph Fahim

This has been a vintage year for documentary filmmaking, boasting a remarkable international roster of illuminating and inventively narrated films. There were works on colonialism like Soundtrack of a Coup d’etat and Ernest Cole: Lost and Found; and on Palestine, like No Other Land; on sexual assault like Black Box Diaries, and cultural restitution like Dahomey, to name but a few.
Palestinian grief and Lebanon's ghosts of war cast a shadow on Locarno 2024

Oct 3, 2024 | middleeasteye.net | Joseph Fahim |Oscar Rickett

In her 2018 book, The Monarchy of Fear, American philosopher Martha Nussbaum rings an alarm bell over the devastating impact of trepidation on democracy. She stressed that the terrorising mechanisms used by people in power to realise their political visions stand in contrast to the free and healthy essence so-called democratic societies believe they possess. Fear is not only endemic to policy-making, but to all facets of contemporary life, including art.