Synopsis:
This sparse black-and-white film is set in 1958, when three Palestinians in Basra, Iraq, decide to travel to Kuwait, each believing he can make a new life for himself there. The three men, from different generations, represent different perspectives on the Palestine issue. Concealed in the steel tank of a truck, the trio attempt to make their way across the border, but encounter fatal setbacks on the way. The Dupes is based on the 1962 novella Men in the Sun by slain Palestinian writer, artist, and resistance leader Ghassan Kanafani, and is one of the first Arab films to tackle the Palestinian issue.
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Translation/Interpretation/Caption Text:
Title: al-Makhdu‘un (المخدوعون) The Dupes.
Cast: Muhammad Khayr Halawani, ‘Abd al-Rahman Al Rashi, Bassam Lutfi As‘ad, Salih Khuluqi, Thana’ Dibsi, ‘Adnan Barakat
(محمد خير حلواني، عبد الرحمن آل رشي، بسّام لطفي أسعد، صالح خلقي، ثناء دبسي، عدنان بركات)
Director: Tawfiq Salih (توفيق صالح)
Producer: al-Mu’ssasah al-‘Ammah lil-Sininma, Damascus, Syria, 1972 (المؤسسة العامة للسينما، دمشق، سورية، ١٩٧٢)
Scenario: Tawfiq Salih (توفيق صالح)
Based on: the novel “Rijal fi al-Shams” (رجال في الشمس) [Men in the Sun] by the Palestinian novelist Ghassan Kanafani, 1936-1972 (غسّان كنفاني، ١٩٣٦-١٩٧٢)
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The Dupes is a stark, beautifully photographed black and white film tracing the destinies of three Palestinian refugees brought together by dispossession, despair and hope for a better future.
The setting is Iraq in the 1950s and the protagonists, concealed in the steel tank of a truck, are trying to make their way across the border into Kuwait, the "promised land."
A masterful adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani's acclaimed novella, Men Under the Sun, The Dupes is also one of the first Arab films to address the Palestinian predicament.
This film is available with a Digital Site License (DSL), which allows colleges, universities, or libraries to encode, locally host, and stream the film to their community on a closed, password-protected system. For more info: http://www.arabfilm.com/item/55/
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A note by Palestine Diary's channel: I used Kdenlive, a video editor and a free open source software, to combine the video and the audio, and attempted to sharpen and improve the available copy on the web.
