Tribeca Film Festival! (It begins!)

Yep, I'm going the the Tribeca Film Festival! A LOT of the Tribeca Film Festival. Fifteen movies between now and next Sunday, to be exact. Some with company, some by myself, all courtesy of General Motors via charity auction at Eton Academy via my generous parents.

The Movie that kicked things off for me tonight was a Tunisian film called "The Making Of." It tells the story of Bahta, a young man desperately seeking the respect he feels he deserves. His unfocused anger - brilliantly played by actor Lotfi Ebdelli - leads him to join a gang, but there he's only appreciated for his dancing ability and his masculinity is often the butt of the group's jokes. His girlfriend flaunts her infidelity in front of him, saying that she's looking for a real man who can support her dream of being an actress. He wants to join the army and fight against the U.S. in Iraq, but he's dismissed as a child. He steals a police uniform and apes at being an authority figure, but as a result he has to go into hiding from the police. Bahta's insecurity ultimately leads him to be taken advantage of by Islamic fundamentalists, who tell Bahta that he will only be respected as a man when he returns to conservative Islam and becomes a martyr.

Bahta's anger makes him an unsteady candidate for martyrdom, though, and his manipulators cut him loose. He screws up his final, desperate attempt for respect and blows himself up, accidentally, in circumstances rendering his act entirely impotent.

The film is a discussion with the audience about a very real mindset - Bahta reminded me so much of young men in gangs I worked with in Detroit - and what can come from it. But "Making Of" is also careful not to claim it knows where to lay the blame. In fact, the film breaks down at a few key points as Lofti refuses to continue the scene and demands to talk with the director about what he's doing, as in one case where he feels Islam is being unfairly implicated.

A great start to what should be quite an experience!