West as home in Ruba Nadda’s films

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this essay, I draw on the concepts of accented/transnational cinemas to discuss four feature films directed by Canadian Syrian filmmaker and TV director Ruba Nadda. Through Sabah (2005); Cairo Time (2009); Inescapable (2012); and October Gale (2014), the viewers witness the reconstruction of the West as home from the standpoint of a Canadian-born Toronto-based woman filmmaker of Arab descent. Despite Nadda’s constant yearning to her Arab origins, one can claim that borders between Arab and non-Arab are not always blurred in her films. Instead, cultural bridges are built across borders to transcend the traditional poetics of exile/immigration and to overcome politics of cultural despair triggered by binaries such as East and West, homeland and hostland, national and transnational belonging, etc. By focusing on issues of homeness, integration, religious difference, and cultural recognition, on the one hand, and questions of home-returning and home-reconstruction, on the other hand, I argue that no matter where Nadda’s characters dwell, they belong to the Western set of values, and they represent each a facet of her multiple identities, chief among them Western individuality. I also investigate the filmmaker’s gender-based approach to mainstream cinematic genres such as romantic comedy and thriller and her interest in these genres as a TV director as well.