The Dupes (1972)

4K RESTORATION — Australian Premiere

“An excruciating, suspenseful and eminently modern work of political cinema that evokes The Wages of Fear and Kafka in equal measure, The Dupes is one of the Arab cinema’s most astonishing achievements.” – The Film Foundation

Three refugees, representing three generations of Palestinians dispossessed of their homeland, meet in Iraq in 1958 to find safe passage to the ‘promised land’ of Kuwait. Filmed entirely in Syria, The Dupes is directed by an Egyptian social realist filmmaker and based on the 1963 novel Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani, the eminent Palestinian refugee, writer and political activist. The three refugees are played by non-professional actors from Syria and Palestine adding to the film’s heightened social realist style. Only available for decades in very poor, virtually unwatchable copies, Scorsese’s Film Foundation and the Cineteca de Bologna finally accessed the film elements in Syria and debuted this 4K restoration in Bologna last year.

Introduced by Lucia Sorbera at Ritz Cinemas and Lucia Sorbera via video at Lido Cinemas.

“The Dupes is an evocative statement on the Palestinian diaspora, avoiding familiar Western oppositions between Arabs and Israelis and making a strong, compelling statement about human suffering in explicitly moral terms.” – Criterion 

“A gripping story of hope, tragedy and powerlessness, which is perhaps the defining triad of emotions the dispossessed feel when taking on the world.” – Rio Revuelto 

“Creates a dense interweaving of past and present and fiction and documentary in this harsh condemnation of the treatment of diaspora Palestinians by their fellow Arabs.” – Electronic Intifada  

Rating

Unclassified 15+

Duration

107 min

Language

Arabic (English subtitles)

Cast

Mohamed Kheir-Halouani, Abdul Rahman Al Rashi, Bassan Lofti Abou-Ghazala

Director

Tewfik Saleh