Participants during the discussion.
Doha, Qatar: The Katara Arabic Novel Library recently hosted an evening entitled, “An Analytical Reading and Discussion of the Film The Deceived” in cooperation with the Read and Rise Club, in which Muhammad Hashem participated and was moderated by Ahmed Jalajel.
The evening was attended by a number of club members and cinema audiences. The evening included a critical reading of the film The Deceived, adapted from the novel Men in the Sun by the late Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani, published in 1963 and directed by director Tawfiq Saleh.
Critic Muhammad Hashem said that the film is one of the best hundred films produced by Arab cinema and has won many international awards, noting that the film deals with the story of three Palestinians from different generations, whose circumstances and life needs differ, but they share their goal of escaping to Kuwait, the land of oil.
He noted that Director Tawfiq Saleh made some modifications while writing the script, the most notable of which was making the three characters flop on the tank at the end of the work, citing his saying: “I found the script to be more humane and far removed from any politics; therefore, I thought that a person would stumble before he died.”
He added that the events of the film simulate the life of the Palestinian people ten years after the Nakba, when the Palestinians began to wake up from the horror of the shock, and realise the truth of what happened to them, between the refugee camps and displacement, and between the false promises and the loss of the cause, as the film sheds light on the psychological tensions and internal conflicts that they are experiencing.
