Guerrillas, Border Crossings and Internationalism: The Liberation of Non-Arabs in Jocelyne Saab’s Early Documentaries

Jocelyne Saab was a pioneer in non-fiction filmmaking in the Middle East, but she was not always perceived favorably by critics or the establishment. Her documentaries were consistently creative, idealistic, activist and not usually in line with the governing parties’ discourse. Her earliest war reportage already showcased a proclivity for the poetic power of painfully truthful images. And the “osmosis” between fiction and non-fiction in her work reflects her own border-crossing reality. In this chapter, I will discuss three films, looking specifically at the revolutionary interests of Jocelyne Saab in Iraq: War in Kurdistan (1974), The Sahara is Not for Sale (1977) and Iran, Utopia in Motion (1980). These three films show how Saab rejects the label of Arab filmmaker, and how her internationalism led her to report on territories where borders were crossed, both literally and metaphorically. In all three films, Saab focuses on young people. Through a truly internationalist, feminist gaze and voice, she makes her viewers really see the wider consequences of seemingly local conflict. Her vision of the Middle East is one that showcases its diversity through language, culture, literature, art and ways of living.