Being Osama: Documentary Review

I met Mahmoud Kaabour [director of Being Osama] in Montreal. An ambitious Lebanese [like every Lebanese], who hopes to move the world with his documentaries...
...and has succeeded thus far.

I watched Being Osama and found it worthy of its acclaim, but felt that the characters seemed somewhat surreal, quite a bit off from the norm, which to an ignorant audience, can mislead towards misconceptions of "What is an Arab in North America".

Here's a full review by The Daily Star:

Being Osama

Lebanese director explores the difficulties of carrying the Al-Qaeda leader's name and being an Arab in Canada in award-winning documentary

by Ramsay Short
Wednesday, March 23, 2005

"How much more does an Arab need to do to become a Canadian," Mahmoud Kaabour says via email from Montreal. The 25-year-old Lebanese who has lived, studied and worked in Canada since 1998 has just returned from the Canadian Race Relations Foundation's Anti-Racism Awards in Alberta. There he received a Certificate of Merit for his documentary film "Being Osama," which aired in February on the prestigious Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's series "The Passionate Eye."

Kaabour was refused permission earlier this month by Canadian Immigration services to visit Harvard University in the United States, where "Being Osama" was one of six documentary films screened at a festival entitled "New Documentaries From The War On Terror."

Fittingly, racism and the difficulties facing Arabs in Canada are exactly what the young director's film is all about.

"It's ironic," he explains, "and so frustrating. Having lived in Canada for such a long time and perfected my English and French and contributed to multi-culturalism with my film, it's absurd that I keep waiting for the day when I'll be considered a permanent resident of Canada."

Kaabour, a Concordia University graduate, was not allowed to travel because he remains an Arab in the eyes of Canadian authorities and not a citizen despite the fact that he has lived in Montreal since he was 19. He has not yet been granted security clearance for his application for permanent residence though he has everything else - medical clearance and assurances from Ottawa that he will be allowed to remain on humanitarian grounds.

"This was the big story that no one picked up on last year when my documentary was first aired. I came here at 19 to study film and Canada grew on me," he explains. "So I submitted an application for immigration in 2001 but it still hasn't received a final ok. If I leave the country my file will be annulled, so I haven't been able to visit my folks or Raouche or Gemmayzeh or any of my favorite places in Beirut for five years now."

Kaabour explained that the Canadian Immigration services will let him go wherever he wants but there is no guarantee he will be allowed to return.

Being an Arab in North America is not easy today. Three-and-a-half years after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. and two years since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, if you have not been interned at the pleasure of the American government as an Arab or Muslim, you are likely to have faced obstacles in everything from applying for a driver's license to depositing a check in your name in a bank.

Canada, the more tolerant and generally better-regarded nation for Arabs and Arab immigrants, has also been guilty of impeding Arabs (both Muslims and Christians) in their daily lives.

In Montreal where Kaabour's film is set, there are about 68,000 Arabs, two-thirds of whom are Muslim, according to a 2001 federal census.

Produced by independent Canadian production company Diversus Films, and funded by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) (Kaabour received $309,000 from CBC to make the film, about 50 percent more than the average cost of a CBC documentary) "Being Osama" examines exactly the above subject.

Except that the Arabs involved did not face a backlash because of their skin color, race or religion. They faced adversity because of their name.

"The film was a way for me to evoke memories of my childhood, the weddings, the funerals," says Kaabour who is a Muslim. "I had shit happen to me because of my name after September 11, working for racist Italians - but I didn't want to make a film about myself. I preferred to make it about a whole community through the Osama hook."

"Being Osama" explores the lives of six Montreal residents with highly diverse backgrounds, interests, and personalities, united by their first name and by their experience as Arabs living in Canada in the post-September 11 world.

It is an intelligent, well-made story that raises questions in the viewer without banging them over the head with the dilemmas faced by the Osamas involved. Not only does it touch on the subject of racism in Canada, "Being Osama" does much to combat that racism by portraying the humanity of the subjects and meaning of identity through their Arab names, rock and roll, religion, Middle East politics, and indeed weddings and funerals.

The film follows the subjects beginning with the launching of the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 to the anti-WTO demonstrations in late July of that year, and offers an intimate look at the evolving lives of each of them.

There is Osama Sarraf, a Palestinian-Canadian who is a successful DJ and aspiring rock star, pursuing a chance at his big break. There is Osama Naggar, an Egyptian-Canadian who is an opera expert and major importer of classical CDs, as he celebrates his birthday and finally makes peace with his identity as a Quebecois.

Then there is the diminutive Osama al-Jundi, a Lebanese-Canadian who runs a Muslim school and holds onto his roots and traditions as he cares for his students and lives through the sudden loss of his father. One of the more outspoken of the six is Osama Demerdash, a politically active Egyptian-Canadian who battles injustice in the streets and in the courts even as he wrestles with his own future in Canada.

Osama Dorias is an Iraqi-Canadian political science student who embraces Canadian life and dreams of being a diplomat while pondering the proper way to be a "cool Muslim." And finally there is Osama Shalabi, a composer and musician from an Egyptian family who provides music and a narrative commentary throughout the journey.

None of them look like your typical post-September 11 Osama bin Laden-standardized image of an Arab - Osama Sarraf has dreadlocks and goes to church, for example.

"It was important to show the fact that none of the Osamas match the usual stereotype of the person with a beard sitting on a camel with a gun," Kaabour says.

All the Osamas have dealt with personal attacks or problems because of their names.

Shalabi had his bank account frozen after attempting to deposit a cheque in his name. Demerdash's colleagues in a computer firm tried to get him fired. Sarraf saw his career as a musician suffer with rejections from record companies. And Naggar says poignantly at one point "My name was stolen from me."

"Being Osama" has gotten a lot of recognition, attracting around 500,000 viewers when it was aired last month in Canada. It won Best Documentary at the University Film and Video Conference in the United States in 2004 and consequently was selected for the screening at Harvard. No small achievement for Kaabour, who was unable to speak about his film at the University's festival.

Quoted in The Montreal Gazette, one of the assistant curators at Harvard's film archive responsible for selecting "Being Osama" for screening, said of the film: "I'm fascinated as an American to find that some of the challenges we face are washing over into Canada," adding that the American public broadcaster PBS sadly would not show such films as it was under political and financial pressure and couldn't afford to be controversial.

Kaabour, however, is unbowed and hopes to get his film to Lebanon and the Arab world this year.

"I hope we can get it to the likes of the Docudays film fest in Beirut, and the Dubai Film Festival might be interested. I am also trying to get it to the Ismailia Documentary Film Festival and am negotiating with Al-Jazeera to get it aired too."

For those interested in watching the film now, "Being Osama" can be purchased through the U.S. based distribution company www.arabfilm.com

Kaabour's next project is a film about his grandfather - one of the legendary Egyptian diva Oum Kalthoum's violinists: "He left behind him seven beautiful violin improvisations recorded on a little tape-recorder which I had remastered here in Canada."

As for Kaabour's status as a permanent Canadian citizen he may leave whether he can return to Montreal or not. "I will be returning to the Middle East this year whether the immigration file is concluded or not since enough damage has occurred, in my opinion.

"I miss Beirut a lot," he said. don't we all
-dailystar

Being Osama can be purchased online at:
www.arabfilm.com

-finkployd