EGYPTIAN film director Mohamed Diab sees his movie Amira as a drama that draws crowds at international festivals, but Palestinians see it as an insult to their people in Israeli jails.

The story of a girl conceived with sperm smuggled out of prison whose biological father turns out to be an Israeli jailer rather than a Palestinian is not going to the Oscars after all.

After screenings at festivals in Egypt, Italy and Tunisia, Diab had been counting on Jordan, where Amira was filmed, to nominate it to represent the kingdom at the Oscars.

But instead Jordan has pulled the movie.

“We do believe in the artistic value of the film, and that its message does not harm the Palestinian cause or that of the prisoners in any way; on the contrary, it highlights their plight, their resilience,” said the Royal Film Commission.

However, it withdrew the film “in light of the recent huge controversy that the film has triggered and perception that it is detrimental to the Palestinian cause and out of respect to the feelings of the prisoners and their families”.

Its subject matter is not uncommon: dozens of children are said to have been born from vials of sperm smuggled out of Israeli jails by released prisoners who manage to evade the scrutiny of army checkpoints.

The method served Lydia Rimawi, a Palestinian in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to give birth to three children.

But she detests the twist in the tale of the “disgusting” movie.

“It is not a movie, such as Amira, that will make us bend: nobody on Earth can make us bow our head,” she wrote angrily on Facebook.

‘Pull Out Amira’

Under the hashtag #PullOutAmira, social media has been awash with criticism of the work of the 43-year-old filmmaker, who was educated in New York with several awards to his name.

“This film insults Palestinian prisoners without ever mentioning the suffering of hundreds of prisoners’ families,” tweeted Reem Jihad.

Diab, whose movie ends with a disclaimer that more than 100 children have been confirmed as offspring of Palestinian prisoners through sperm smuggling, has called for a “spectator committee made up of prisoners and relatives to watch and discuss” Amira.

He insists that the film is not meant to “insult the Palestinian cause or prisoners in any way”.

But Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, which represents more than 4,500 Palestinians held behind bars by Israel, remains adamant.

“We have watched the film from A to Z and, after many sessions to observe the details, we reject it in its entirety,” said head Qaddura Fares.

For Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs Gaza and which has hundreds of its members locked up by the Jewish state, the film is nothing more than a “service to the Zionist enemy”.

Amira was financed by Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The main actors are Jordanian, with other roles played by Arab Israelis.

Saudi Arabia has pulled the movie from its first Red Sea Film Festival, which opened on Monday, in the face of the outcry. – AFP, December 12, 2021.