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Joseph Fahim

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Joseph Fahim is a film critic, curator, and lecturer. His curated programs have been presented in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. He co-authored various books on Arab cinema and has contributed to numerous outlets in the Middle East, including Middle East Eye, Middle East Institute, Al Monitor, and Al Jazeera along with various international platforms and publications such as Mubi’s Notebook, Sight & Sound, British Film Institute, and BBC Culture. To date, his writings have been published in nine different languages.

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Salvation (2026) EDIT “The film’s most impressive achievement lies in its patient and meticulous demonstration of how power is seized and sustained; how fear remains the most effective tool for mobilising communities. ” – Middle East Eye Mar 20, 2026 Full Review Safe Exit (2026) EDIT “Hammad’s protagonists are defeated, deflated characters, too exhausted and too ill-equipped to carve a tangible path out of their eternal purgatory. ” – Middle East Eye Mar 20, 2026 Full Review In A Whisper (2026) 90% EDIT “Bouzid’s vapid, one-note "us versus a bigoted society" discourse soon grows tiresome, particularly as she fails to interrogate, or even mask, her own orientalist gaze.” – Middle East Eye Mar 20, 2026 Full Review Only Rebels Win (2026) EDIT “Arbid curiously opts for a largely straightforward approach, resulting in a potent and involving, if rudimentary, drama that adheres closely to the Fassbinder original without perceptive sociological insight.” – Middle East Eye Mar 20, 2026 Full Review Yellow Letters (2026) 82% EDIT “Catak places the viewer through the wringer, posing difficult questions about the fragile boundary between pragmatic survival and moral compromises when making art under authoritarian rule. ” – Middle East Eye Mar 20, 2026 Full Review Chronicles from the Siege (2026) EDIT “Rather than foregrounding the overt political rhetoric that has shaped much post-7 October Palestinian cinema, Khatib gravitates toward the elemental experience of life on the battered side of war. ” – Middle East Eye Mar 20, 2026 Full Review Irkalla: Gilgamesh's Dream (2025) EDIT “Self-importantly bleak and exasperatingly formulaic, Irkalla is the bastard child of Capernaum: a regressive piece of misery porn replete with child labour, terrorist plots, and underage prostitution. ” – Middle East Eye Jan 23, 2026 Full Review The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025) 95% EDIT “The film’s unmodulated use of the child’s calls leaves space only for enforced sympathy rather than reflective distance. The aestheticisation of actual events through such a synthetic narrative ultimately denies Hind individuality.” – BFI Jan 16, 2026 Full Review Cotton Queen (2025) EDIT “The patchy, uneven performances fail to bring the emotion of the story to the fore. And the overstuffed script never takes the unpredictable left turns it constantly hints at. ” – Middle East Eye Dec 21, 2025 Full Review A Sad and Beautiful World (2025) EDIT “Love is hard work: a series of difficult compromises, Aris suggests, and living in the permanent purgatory that is Lebanon certainly compounds these compromises. ” – Middle East Eye Dec 21, 2025 Full Review Hijra (2025) EDIT “Part affecting tale of female bonding, part perceptive reflection on evolving intergenerational relationships, and part an incisive dissection of class and race in the kingdom, Ameen’s brilliant picture is one of the most daring Saudi films ever made. ” – Middle East Eye Sep 5, 2025 Full Review Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due (2025) EDIT “Canto Due remains as light as a feather; a diverting wish-fulfillment fronted by a maddingly passive, soulless protagonist. Kechiche no longer has anything remotely fresh or noteworthy to say about the Arab experience in France. ” – Middle East Eye Aug 22, 2025 Full Review With Hasan in Gaza (2025) 100% EDIT “Gaza has endured plenty of pain, Aljafari emphasises, but it never lost its humanity, its joy, its resilience. Aljafari captures this world so vividly, so tenderly, so unassumingly in his futile search for a piece of himself forever lost in detention. ” – Middle East Eye Aug 22, 2025 Full Review Hysteria (2025) 93% EDIT “Hysteria is superlative political entertainment: a bold, intelligent picture that explores the complex and often contradictory relationship of second-generation Germans to their Islamic heritage, class privilege, the moral price of artistic integrity. ” – BFI Aug 16, 2025 Full Review Dreams (2024) 90% EDIT “Storytelling may have aided Johanne’s healing; it may have given her a powerful tool for self-affirmation, for reclaiming the narrative Johanna has never and may never acknowledge, but it couldn’t grant her closure. ” – BFI Aug 16, 2025 Full Review The President's Cake (2025) 99% EDIT “Hadi paints a stark portrait of a dog-eat-dog world with fizzling morality. His political commentary is pronounced, finding no difference between Hussein’s megalomania and the West’s casual ambivalence towards Iraqi civilians. ” – Middle East Eye Aug 16, 2025 Full Review October 8 (2024) 63% EDIT “October 8 is built on a series of deliberate omissions and fear mongering, an unscrupulous if familiar tactic that betrays the subjects’ indignation and their weak conviction. ” – Middle East Eye Jun 2, 2025 Full Review The Encampments (2025) 94% EDIT “Personal histories of the activists provide ample opportunities for reflections around questions of identity, trauma, and the youthful desire for tangible change. The Encampments is an urgent document of an event that has been tarnished by the media. ” – Middle East Eye Jun 2, 2025 Full Review 1001 Frames (2025) EDIT “1001 Frames never transcends its narrow experimental parameters, never managing to build tension due to the rigidity of a static structure that grows tiresome by the halfway mark. ” – Middle East Eye Mar 23, 2025 Full Review No Beast. So Fierce. (2025) EDIT “With no socio-political context provided, the self-congratulatory stylisation of No Beast quickly runs thin as it sluggishly salivates for relevance in its waning moments. ” – Middle East Eye Mar 23, 2025 Full Review Khartoum (2025) 93% EDIT “Realised with remarkable sensitivity and shot with distinctive lyricism, Khartoum never solely relies on its urgent politics to lift the picture up; its mature, striking artistry is inseparable from its unsentimental humanism. ” – Middle East Eye Mar 23, 2025 Full Review Yunan (2025) EDIT “Yunan is self-involved, stubbornly insular narration, leading to a highly problematic standardisation and flattening of Arab exile – a complex experience shaped by class, politics, and disparate psychological factors. ” – Middle East Eye Mar 23, 2025 Full Review Yalla Parkour (2024) 82% EDIT “Zuaiter fails to convey the full essence of Ahmad. Zuaiter’s hagiographic, one-dimensional presentation of her protagonist leaves off his loves, his weaknesses, his relationships, and even his political convictions. ” – Middle East Eye Mar 11, 2025 Full Review The Brutalist (2024) 93% EDIT “The Brutalist is the story of modern America’s derision of art, of any creative endeavour that has no immediate monetary value. America has no place for a man of Laszlo’s ilk, for defiant art that refuses to abide by the rules of the market. ” – Middle East Eye Feb 3, 2025 Full Review To a Land Unknown (2024) 98% EDIT “The biggest feat of Fleifel’s humanistic tour de force is the agency it gives his young men to be whoever they are: hustling junkies, headstrong hoodlums forever thrust in a quixotic quest to find a home they can never attain” – Middle East Eye Dec 28, 2024 Full Review
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