DDocumentary CompetitionOriginal Title: Et comme si nous attrappions un cobra
Director: Hala Alabdalla
Syria, France, United Arab Emirates | Arabic
2012 | 120min. | Colour
Subtitles: English
Format: HDCAM
12+The art of caricature has thrived in the Arab world for more than a century, and artists have been singularly able to reflect the everyday woes of citizens who have never been made fully aware of their rights. With many other artists living under authoritarian rule, what is pointedly not said – a telling absence that is immediately decipherable by readers – makes the work even more evocative and subversive.

In Cairo, director Hala Alabdalla interviews Mohieddin Al Labbad, a veteran caricature artist, illustrator and graphic designer, and emerging artists from the younger generation that he has mentored. In Damascus, she interviews infamous caricature artist Ali Farzat and Hazem Al Hamwi, a younger artist, who displays on camera all the drawings he never dared to publish. She also interviews novelist and essayist Samar Yazbek who reflects on the place of irony, laughter, censorship and insubordination in contemporary Arab letters.

Suddenly, in the midst of filming, the winds of revolution sweep through Tunisia, Egypt, and shortly thereafter, Syria. Al Labbad passes away; Farzat is beaten senseless by thugs from the Syrian regime, his hands broken; Yazbek is detained and released and decides to flee the country for her daughter’s safety. As the making of the film itself blends quite literally with its subject, As If We Were Catching a Cobra becomes an electrifying, intimate, passionate documentary on the fearless tenacity of Arab artists fighting for freedom and justice.

- Rasha Salti