Outside the frame: Arab diaspora filmmakers show the pain of exile at Abu Dhabi Film Festival

In The Immigrant, Charlie Chaplin plays a penniless tramp for laughs as he crosses the Atlantic to find his fortune in the US.

We chuckle as he lurches on board a ship where seasick passengers are packed like sardines and lands on his luck by stumbling on a few dollars, which he uses to woo and marry a fellow passenger.

But unlike the 1917 silent classic, the reality of migration rarely, if ever, means stepping from poverty to a happy ending just 20 minutes later.

The reality for the millions who pack their few possessions to migrate to an unknown land for an uncertain future is, of course, far more precarious.

Across the Middle East and in such war zones as Syria, Iraq and Libya, enforced displacements, penurious states and punitive regimes mean mass migration is a daily occurrence. But the history of migration from the Arab world, whether for survival or for riches, stretches back centuries.

The Arab diaspora is now scattered across the globe, from the Americas to Asia and Africa, with about 30 million living miles from their homeland. Whether they are first-generation immigrants or descendants who have assimilated, what that diaspora creates is a bridge between two cultures and a series of tough choices – ones consisting of cooperation or conflict.

Those ideas are explored in this year’s special programme at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival (ADFF), which begins on Thursday.

Original article by Tahira Yaqoob

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Outside the frame: Arab diaspora filmmakers show the pain of exile at Abu Dhabi Film Festival