Western Arabs (2019)

Directed by: Omar Shargawi | 76 minutes | documentary | Starring: Omar Shargawi, Munir Shargawi, Elin Shargawi, Rune Shargawi, Gorm Kareem Shargawi, Amina Shargawi, Hassan El Sayed

Omar Shargawi is an actor, writer and director. His mother is Danish. His father is Palestinian. The filmmaker, who grew up in Copenhagen, made his debut with ‘Go with Peace, Jamil’ (2008). This feature film was shown at the IFFR, among others, and won a Tiger Award there. It is not easy for a child of two cultures. You will not be accepted anywhere. Arabs do not see you as a full Arab and with the Danes you are left out because you are not Danish enough. With ‘Western Arabs’, Shargawi made a documentary about this feeling. He mainly focuses on the influence his father Munir, who was traumatized by the war, has on his life.

Munir is aggressive, foul-mouthed and often violent, even in front of the camera. Despite the fact that he has lived in Denmark for decades and has built a happy life there – the proverbial “house, tree, animal” has all been ticked off, his emotional state is unstable. Pleasant episodes alternate with periods in which no contact seems possible and in which Munir is hostile, also or perhaps especially towards his children. Omar feels that his father’s influence is mostly negative and that history repeats itself – the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree effect. This is expressed in a candid scene in which the film-maker himself admits to having threatened his younger brother with scissors, a pair of scissors he had originally brought to defend that same brother.

Shargawi does not make it easy for the viewer. ‘Western Arabs’ consists of footage shot by the filmmaker over a period of more than ten years, from the start of his career, combined with (behind-the) scenes from films he has made and in which his father collaborated. Often Shargawi filmed against the will of his family, especially his father. However, he did this consciously, so that the images only showed the real reality. However, there is little explanation. As a viewer you are sometimes thrown right in the middle. You then have to figure out for yourself what you are actually looking at. In addition, the Dane does not seem to care about visual beauty. Sometimes there are even fragments that are downright ugly, an unflattering angle and composition that makes you look directly into someone’s nostrils, for example. There are also archive footage, which gives some direction to the film: 9/11 and footage of the war in the Gaza Strip.

Still, ‘Western Arabs’ strikes a chord. When the filmmaker indicates that he asked Munir to participate in his film, so that through the dialogues he wrote himself he could finally get his father to say the words he hoped he would one day do on his own, you will find this in your heart. Shargawi is also very honest: scenes that would end up in the trash even if it were home video material, because it shows someone from his least positive side, he has simply processed in his final product. That shows guts. ‘Western Arabs’ is without a doubt a perfect example of navel-gazing. Yet Shargawi manages to tell a universal story about war trauma, father-child relationships and the position of refugees in Europe.