| The Dupes [Al Makhdu'un]  Director: Tawfik Saleh (1972) Time: 107 minutes Arabic with English Subtitles "A classic masterpiece of Arab cinema." - The North African and Middle East Festival "Skillfully directed and crisply photographed in black and white." - John Hartl, The Seattle Times |
The Dupes is a stark and stately black and white film that traces the destinies of three different men brought together by their dispossession, their despair and their hope for a better future.
The time is the 1950s, the place is Iraq and the protagonists are Palestinian refugees who are trying to make their way across the border into Kuwait, the "Promised Land," concealed in the steel tank of a truck. Each one believes he can make a new life for himself, but as the film title suggests, their flight is no solution.
One of the first Arab films to address the Palestinian question, the story is based on the 1962 novella "Men in the Sun" by assassinated Palestinian writer, artist and resistance leader, Ghassan Kanafani.
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