Saudi dark comedy A Matter of Life and Death screened in New York on Saturday, following earlier showings in two Scandinavian cities this year.
Starring Saudi actor Sarah Taibah and directed by Anas Ba-Tahaf, the film was screened at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York, in a presentation hosted by ANA Contemporary Arab Cinema.
Taibah wrote A Matter of Life and Death and also plays one of its lead characters. The film follows 29-year-old Hayat, who believes she has inherited a family curse that will cause her to die on her 30th birthday. Determined and deeply superstitious, Hayat decides to take control of her fate. When she meets heart surgeon Youssef in the emergency room, she becomes convinced that he is meant to help her.
“Dark comedy is my favorite genre,” Taibah previously told Arab News. “So many comedy films are just silly jokes and nothing is serious, and so many Arabic dramas we watch are so much cheating, and weeping on the floor, and so much sadness. But what I like about dark comedy is that it’s closest to reality — I have days where I’ll cry my eyes out and then really have fun later on. Sometimes I laugh in the middle of crying. If you laugh at problems, they suddenly become lighter.”
Ba-Tahaf told Arab News: “I think audiences generally will relate, because, at its core, it’s a movie about generational trauma, and how the way we were raised, or the way we saw our parents dealing with each other, affects how we live our lives. And I think that’s a very universal thing. Then there’s the idea of obsession, or the idea of trying to be in control of everything, and again that’s something that is international.”
The film was previously screened in Oslo and Helsinki earlier this year after premiering at the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah in December.
Saturday’s one-night-only showing marked the film’s first screening in the United States.
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