: Film Festivals Showcase the Arab and Muslim World

Events of the past 6 months have apparently done little to dampen the interest in Arab and Muslim cinema. The Arab and Iranian Film Festival in Seattle ended this week with a 40% increase in attendance over last year. This year’s event, the fifth Arab film festival in 10 years, also was renamed to reflect inclusion of four films from non-Arab Iran. This comes on the heels of the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco, which was cancelled last September, only to return with record attendance in February. And there’s always room for humor – one moviegoer noted a Korean link in one of the films (the father of one of the leads), leading him to dub it the first Axis of Evil film festival.

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.