Arts & Entertainment
Arab filmmaker “running out of relatives to exploit”
Renowned director says career could collapse unless more family members with heartwarming stories emerge
DUBAI: Internationally-renowned auteur and cineaste Farook Coppola stunned the global movie-making fraternity last night when he announced that his supply of family members, used hitherto in documentaries exploring his conflicted past, was in danger of drying up in the near future unless more were discovered soon.
Coppola, whose most recent films have included ‘My Auntie Grew Up Poor In A Beirut Barrio’ and ‘My Cousin Has Lots of Heartbreaking Stories Designed To Appeal To Western Audiences’ recently told the Pan-Arabia Enquirer that unless he discovered a fresh supply of relatives soon, there was a very real danger that his lucrative cinema career might be heading for the skids.
“I just don’t know what else I can do, apart from exploit and fetishise the difficult personal journeys undertaken by my immediate family members,” Coppola lamented. “At a recent awards show, international movie star David Hasselhoff singled out my film ‘My Grandad’s Lost Fishing Rod’ for exceptional praise, explaining that the saga of my Jordanian grandfather’s attempt to retrieve his fishing rod, lost in an seaside holiday during 1972, was an analogy of all our collective pain and suffering.”
The international community has been quick to respond to this latest bombshell from the director of ‘My Neighbour’s Cat Remembers Palestine’. “This is truly a worrying day for the Middle Eastern film industry,” said Herbert Al Guffaw, the President of Worthy Film Causes International. “Without filmmakers such as Coppola serving up these sentimental slices of family pain, how on earth are we to promote Arab film to the rest of the world? They don’t want to see light-hearted escapism such as ‘Monkey Tennis Fun in Gaza’ or ‘When Haroon Met Soraya’ – they want gritty, soul-searching documents of pain and suffering, as so brilliantly realised by Farook.”
Coppola, who is completing his latest project ‘My Brother, Not Terrorist!’, which has already been pre-selected to kickstart the 2013 Venice Film Festival was not available for further comment last night.
