How often do you watch Austrian films? I think I’ve never watched one. Until yesterday, that is, when I went to see Documental del Mes by Filmoteca Canaria in Teatro Guiniguada. And if I didn’t google it beforehand, I would never guess, because this documentary has precious little to do with Austria. I went as far as to check out the reviews. All of them were in German.
Forget the reviews, I thought, let’s see it for real. It’s only €1.
The film turned out to be way better than one would expect from the trailer. True, it might be a bit puzzling to the first-world audience. So, Jowan Safadi is a Palestinian singer-songwriter. Not only he does not look like a troublemaker: if there is any controversy about his songs, it is just normal amount of controversy that you’d expect from any true author. He simply does what a singers-songwriter is supposed to do. So what if some people get offended? Some people always get offended.
In one scene — it looked more like someone’s kitchen than a studio — Jowan patiently explains to the organiser of an Israeli music festival the reasons why he was ignoring or rejecting invitations from other such festivals; the guy, in his turn, spells out why Jowan really has to perform there. Both have valid points.
Throughout the film, Jowan bonds with his 16-year-old son, plays with his dog, goes to the beach with his son and the dog, visits his parents, goes to the parties full of young people — in other words, tries to live a normal life in abnormal country. Oh, he also sings, writes songs, and makes a fun video clip — in Hebrew! Instead of falling asleep, I ended up enjoying it a lot. That’s €1 well spent, I say.
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