Hani Mustafa | 10.28.2010 | Al-Ahram

This year the festival collaborated with the MOMA to organise a special section entitled Mapping Subjectivity, which included two films by Elia Suleiman: Chronicles of A Disappearance and Divine Intervention, which won the Venice Film Festival Horizons award in 1992 and the Cannes Film Festival's jury prize in 2002, respectively. Together with The Time that Remains, which won the Best Middle East Film award at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival last year, they constitute a unique experimental cinematic language. Motion is largely restricted to motion within a static frame, and it is often slow and repetitive. The simplicity, naturalism and sheer humour - as in the father insulting everyone he comes across during the opening scenes of Divine Intervention, or the nihilism of the group of friends in the other two films - marks Suleiman's immediate and unique appeal.

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