Ramy Youssef nabs Emmy nomination for directing ‘The Bear’ episode
Updated 18 July 2024
Arab News
DUBAI: US Egyptian comedian, writer and actor Ramy Youusef has nabbed himself a Primetime Emmy Awards nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series.
Youssef earned the nomination for directing “The Bear” episode titled “Honeydew” from its second season.
The fan-loved episode focused on the character Marcus, the lovable pastry chef portrayed by actor Lionel Boyce.
This is the third Emmy nomination for Youssef and his second for directing, after earning a 2020 nomination for directing an episode of his eponymous series “Ramy.”
For this year’s Emmys, Youssef competes against “The Bear” series creator Christopher Storer for the episode “Fishes,” Guy Ritchie for “The Gentlemen,” Lucia Aniello for “Hacks,” Randall Einhorn for “Abbott Elementary,” and Mary Lou Belli for “The Ms Pat Show.”
Oscar nomination for Palestinian documentary ‘No Other Land’
Updated 24 January 2025
Arab News
DUBAI: The Palestinian documentary “No Other Land” has been nominated for the Best Documentary at this year’s Oscars.
The film was directed by a collective of four Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers — activists Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor — and marks their directorial debut.
“No Other Land” follows the story of Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta in the West Bank, as he fights against the mass expulsion of his community by Israeli forces. Since childhood, Adra has documented the demolition of homes and displacement of residents in his region under military occupation.
The film also explores his unlikely partnership with Abraham, an Israeli journalist who supports his efforts. However, their alliance is tested by the stark inequality between them — Adra lives under constant occupation, while Abraham enjoys freedom and security.
The film has dominated the pre-Oscar awards circuit, winning major accolades such as the top honor at the Cinema Eye Honors, Best Documentary and Best Director at the IDA Awards, Best European Documentary at the European Film Awards, and Best Documentary at the Berlin Film Festival, where it premiered last February.
This year’s Academy Awards ceremony will take place on March 3.
Ramy Youssef’s animated series to have world premiere in Texas
‘#1 Happy Family USA’ explores experiences of Muslim-American family in early 2000s
Updated 24 January 2025
Arab News
DUBAI: Egyptian American actor Ramy Youssef’s animated series “#1 Happy Family USA” will make its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, which runs from March 7 to 15.
The show explores the experiences of a Muslim-American family in the early 2000s.
Youssef voices Rumi Hussein, a 12-year-old boy with big dreams and a desire to fit in. Rumi, named after the 13th century poet, also has a hard time living up to the name.
Youssef also voices Rumi’s father, a former cardiothoracic surgeon who now runs a halal cart.
The series stars actress Alia Shawkat, who is of Iraqi, American, Irish, Italian and Norwegian descent, Egyptian-Canadian comedian Salma Hindy, US singer-actress Mandy Moore, “Ramy” actress Randa Jarrar, and US comedians Chris Redd, Akaash Singh and Whitmer Thomas.
Youssef is the co-creator of the series with US writer and TV producer Pam Brady. The pair are the executive producers of the show with Iraqi-British journalist Mona Chalabi. A24 and Amazon Studios co-produced.
A rundown of the artists whose work will be displayed at this year’s event, which runs until May 25
Updated 24 January 2025
Arab News
JEDDAH: The second edition of the Diriyah Islamic Arts Biennale begins today, showcasing more than 500 “historical objects and contemporary artworks” across five exhibition halls and outdoor spaces.
This year’s theme is “And All That Is In Between,” a phrase the organizers say “encapsulates the vast and awe-inspiring scope of God’s creation as experienced by humankind.”
Over the next four months, the event will, according to the website, present “a profound exploration of how faith is lived, expressed, and celebrated … inviting visitors to reflect on the divine’s wonders and humankind’s connection to it.”
Abdelkader Benchamma's 'Au Bord des Mondes' on display at the Pompidou Center in Paris this year. (Supplied)
The biennale will include new commissions from more than 30 artists, both local and international. The most prominent Saudi artist on the roster is Ahmed Mater, who was the subject of a mid-career retrospective — “Chronicles” — at Christie’s in London last year. Participation in a biennale such as this fits with Mater’s philosophy. In 2020, he told Arab News: “I see exploration, sharing and learning between cultures as vital. Culture is about sharing and progress. It is not static; it is dynamic.”
Mater’s fellow Saudi artist, the printmaker and educator Fatma Abdulhadi will also be presenting works at the biennale. Her prints, she told the Berlin Art Institute in 2021, consist of “layer upon layer of deeper meanings which are expressed through the use of color. Each layer of color is a mirror that allows you to see the others clearly and accept them for what they are.”
Saudi contemporary interpretive dancer Bilal Allaf told Arab News in 2021 why he prefers his improvisational approach to classical dance. “I feel I can express my emotions better,” he said. “I think it’s a pure art form of storytelling — a form of non-verbal communication. As a performer it’s a very profound expression.”
Bilal Allaf. (Supplied)
Bahraini-American artist Nasser Alzayani was the winner of Louvre Abu Dhabi’s inaugural Richard Mille Art Prize in 2021. His practice, the Louvre said at the time, “is a research-driven documentation of time and place through text and image.” Alzayani told Canvas the following year: “I see the work that I’m making as a way of adding to the resources available.”
Makkah native Ahmad Angawi is, according to art collective Edge of Arabia, “inspired by the colorful diversity of the culture of Hejaz.” He is the son of an architect, and has “adopted the concept of … the belief in the fundamental principle of balance, as a state of mind, as well as the belief in its application in the field of design.”
Abdelkader Benchamma, born in France to Algerian parents, creates “delicately executed and dynamic drawings of states of matter,” Edge of Arabia’s website states. “His drawings take their inspiration from visual scenarios that stem from reflections on space and its physical reality.”
Abha native Saeed Gebaan is an industrial engineer by trade, and a co-founder of PHI Studio. “Through installations, programming and movement systems, Gebaan invites viewers to consider the intersection of science and society,” according to Riyadh Art.
Nasser Alzayan, Seeing Things. (Supplied)
Louis Guillaume uses found materials to create his sculptures and “sees his creations as living works destined to evolve over time,” the website of Paris’ Cité International Des Artes states.
The work of Lebanese multidisciplinary artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige has covered film, photography, sculpture, installations, performance lectures and texts. They have written that they “question storytelling, the fabrication of images and representations, the construction of imaginaries, and the writing of history.”
Jeddah-based visual artist Bashaer Hawsawi works with mixed media and found objects. Her practice, according to theartists.net, is centered around “notions of cultural identity, cleansing, belonging and nostalgia.”
Libyan artist Nour Jaouda, the Venice Biennale website states, “relishes in the slow, physical, and felt processes of fabricating hand-dyed textiles. (Their) inherent connectivity begets their association with the eternal and the divine; to the artist, textiles have no beginning or end.”
Lebanese-French interdisciplinary artist Tamara Kalo was raised in Riyadh. “She works with photography, video and sculpture to investigate narratives that shape home, history and identity,” Riyadh Art states.
Nour Jaouda's 'The Light In Between'. (Supplied)
Raya Kassisieh is a London-based artist of Palestinian heritage who says she “explores the politics of the body in a multidisciplinary practice that presents a deeply personal interrogation of form.” Her work “proposes that the body is the ultimate tool for reimagination and creation.”
The Japanese artist Takashi Kuribayashi creates large-scale installations. The central theme of his work, he has said, is the “invisible realm” and its boundary. “The truth resides in places that are invisible. Once you are aware that there is a different world out of sight, you will be living in a different way.”
Saudi photographer and filmmaker Hayat Osamah “seeks to challenge conventional norms and celebrate diversity,” Riyadh Art states, while Jeddah-born multidisciplinary artist Anhar Salem also works primarily in film, often using phone-shot videos “to question self-representation and image production in communities that have been marginalized as a result of migration and economic policies,” according to Cité International Des Artes.
This year’s roster also includes Argentinian artist Gabriel Chaile; Amman-based Kuwaiti artist and curator Ala Younis; Asim Waqif, an Indian artist based in New Delhi; Taiwanese multidisciplinary artist Charwei Tsai; Lahore-based duo Ehsan ul Haq and Iqra Tanveer; Eurasian art collective Slavs and Tatars; Italian visual artist Arcangelo Sassolino; British architect and multidisciplinary artist Asif Khan; French-Iraqi artist Mehdi Moutashar; German-Iranian photographer and sculptor Timo Nasseri; Multimedia poet-musician duo Hylozic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser); Colombian multidisciplinary artist Nohemi Pérez; Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi, whose work is inspired by the miniature paintings of Mughal courts; Brazilian artist Lucia Koch; and the British interdisciplinary artist Osman Yousefzada.
REVIEW: Netflix’s French thriller ‘Ad Vitam’ fails to pick a lane
Updated 24 January 2025
Adam Grundey
JEDDAH: It’s hard to know quite what to make of “Ad Vitam.” Maybe because its creators don’t seem to have decided quite what they were making.
Co-writer Guillaume Canet stars as Franck Lazarev, whose wife Leo is just days away from giving birth to their first child. Franck is working a civilian job checking historical buildings for structural cracks (which makes for some stunning opening shots of Paris). A few days after finding their apartment has been ransacked, they are attacked by masked intruders, who kidnap Leo and tell Franck that unless he hands over “the key,” she will die and he will be framed for her murder. It all makes for a gripping 30 minutes.
Then the story goes back a full decade. Leo and Franck are trainees for the GIGN (essentially the French police’s anti-terrorist unit). They become ace agents, bond with certain colleagues, fall in love… you get the picture. It’s a montage — but one that takes around 20 minutes when it could have taken two. It throws off the momentum considerably.
Next, we jump ahead nine years to find Franck leading a team of agents who are called to a hotel where gunshots have been heard. Things escalate rapidly. Two perpetrators are killed, but so is Franck’s best friend, and his protégé is seriously wounded. Franck is fired.
But he can’t let it go. He gets his friend’s badge tested for DNA (explaining a notable focus on badges in the earlier flashback sequence) and discovers that one of the two perps was actually a government agent. A conspiracy begins to unravel. The key demanded by the kidnappers opens the locker where Franck has stashed the evidence.
Back to the present: Franck rushes to save Leo, and we’re back to frantic action, this time with mediocre parkour scenes and a paragliding sequence that is hilarious (unintentionally). Canet clearly fancies himself an all-action hero in the Tom Cruise mold. He doesn’t pull it off. Like the film itself, Canet is best when playing it small and gritty.
Credit to the makers for taking some big swings, but they don’t come off. And while “Ad Vitam” is entertaining enough, it’s also instantly forgettable.
Audio artist Tarek Atoui discusses his participation at this year’s AlUla Arts Festival
Updated 24 January 2025
Nada Alturki
ALULA: Anyone walking through the valleys and mountains of AlUla will notice its unique stone formations and untouched carvings — but not many would notice the echoes of falling rocks. Lebanese artist and electroacoustic composer Tarek Atoui says some of the valleys sound like “porcelain or crystal.”
“In Hegra, you don’t really hear it because it’s an archeological site,” he adds. “You really have to walk in valleys or in places that are wilder.”
Atoui has made a name for himself by blurring the boundaries of sound, technology, art, and collaborative performance. His latest participation — at AlUla Arts Festival, in Bayt Al Hams (The Whispering House) — is a testament to his ability to blend the human, the natural, and the machine. On the festival’s opening night on Jan. 16, Atoui, French musician Toma Gouband, and students from AlUla staged an intriguing performance using custom-designed instruments, natural objects such as tree branches and rocks, and cutting-edge techniques.
Tarek Atoui and French musician Toma Gouband during their performance at AlUla Arts Festival on Jan 16. (Supplied)
“I believe sound can take you to places where you really speak about the inner and not just the surface — and that’s what I love about it,” Atoui tells Arab News. “Sound is an abstract medium, so it can create sensations and emotions in us in an unexpected way, and what you choose to do with it is very personal and intimate. It’s something that allows you to speak of an identity, of an intimacy, of a fragility, that maybe image doesn’t allow you to.
“If you want to find out about a place then, of course, you find out about its history, archeology, geology, its different social and political realities. But it’s mainly about talking to the people that inhabit it. And the best way, in my case, to have a dialog with people is through what I do. So that’s why it was very important to reach out to people in this way.”
Bayt Al Hams, a dedicated hub for Atoui’s work, is a soundscape that will be changing almost seasonally, he explains. It showcases a selection of works that rely largely on four natural elements: water, stone, metal, and glass.
Visitors to Atoui's “Bayt Al-Hams” exhibition. (Supplied)
The interactive space is scattered with contraptions that create sound, from textile squares to tablas to metal-infused ink hooked up to machinery developed by Atoui himself.
“It’s a kind of easy way to get into a complex, deep topic,” he says. “The things that are here have a double life. Let’s say they’re animated and automated through computer software and algorithms I write, which kind of drive this space, but they are also brought to life by human beings, the students we work with, the musicians we work with,” he explains.
Atoui was first inspired by techno music, or, as he describes it, “music that had physicality to it.” He went on to study contemporary music, and began to understand that any sound can be musical. “You can work with sound in so many ways to make music. And that was liberating for me, because I didn’t know how to compose with scores and classical instruments,” he says.
He was interested in poetry, literature, and theater too, but when he went to France — where he is now based — for university, he fell in love with the crossover between art, mathematics, abstraction, and sound.
His unique art, he says, came “through a lot of improvisation, like thinking how to use the computer as a music instrument, learning how to code and to program and to create software for sound, and, from there, learning how to work with electronics and build electronic instruments.”
Atoui’s latest participation — at AlUla Arts Festival, in Bayt Al Hams (The Whispering House) — is a testament to his ability to blend the human, the natural, and the machine. (Supplied)
He was also interested in education, which began manifesting in his practice.
“Not having a musical background myself, I wanted to encourage people from different realms to also have a say in sound, or to use new technologies to make sound and music,” he explains.
He’s worked with Palestinian refugees in camps, with groups in the suburban areas of Cairo, and in parts of Europe, Asia, and the US.
“It was a really mind-opening experience to travel to all these places and to perform, teach, and interact with people. Slowly, I started to slide towards the art world, because this is where I found (more) freedom. I didn’t feel I was exclusively a musician,” he says.
Atoui is not concerned that his work may be too avant-garde to ever go mainstream.
“That’s no problem at all,” he says. “We each have our sensibilities and tastes. To me, also, there are musical things that are not music.”
