New documentary premieres

A new documentary about comedy in the Middle East has premiered at New York’s Tribeca film festival.

Omid Djalili, who features in the movie Just Like Us, helped launch it by performing a ten-minute stand-up set in front of festival supreme Robert DeNiro. ‘Thank God he laughed,’ the Anglo-Iranian comedian Tweeted. ‘He was very gracious after and we had pictures taken. No doubt it’ll end up in Hello magazine. He is a class act.’

The 72-minute film was directed by Egyptian-American comic Ahmed Ahmed, and traces the attempts to bring Western-style stand-up to the Middle East. Acts including Djalili, Tom Papa, Maz Jobrani and Angelo Tsarouchas performed in four locations: Dubai, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Notes accompanying the film’s New York screening say: ‘As one of the first comedy shows in the Arab world starts rolling, backstage anxiety and nerves rumble after busting open cultural taboos in each city. The comics willfully walk the line on jokes about Islam, sexuality, and body parts—at times even with a foul mouth.’

In its review of the film, Hollywood trade bible Variety said its message was oversimplified and the style sometimes clichéd – but added that the stand-up was often funny.

It said: ‘Some formidable talents, such as Omid Djalili, provide genuine laughs amid the feel-good sociology, solemn pronouncements and soft-pedal approach to very real differences between global perspectives.’

Here is a trailer:

Published: 26 Apr 2010