KARACHI, May 11: The issues immigrants, specifically from Muslim backgrounds, face while trying to integrate into Europe’s mainstream, is a hot topic nowadays.
However Dutch film Shouf Shouf Habibi! (Hush Hush Baby) treats the serious subject in a light, but not vacuous, highly entertaining manner. It was shown at the Goethe-Institut here on Friday as part of the Windows on Europe film festival.
Directed by Dutchman Albert ter Heerdt, the 2004 feature film, shot on 16mm, tells the story of second generation immigrant Abdullah ‘Ap’ Bentarek, whose Moroccan father hopped across the Straits of Gibraltar into Europe seeking a better life for himself and his family.
But the family discovers that the streets of Amsterdam aren’t exactly paved with gold, while the older generation has to sacrifice much of their cultural values and acclimatise themselves to the new, ‘open’ Dutch lifestyle.
Hilarity ensues as Ap tries out one ridiculous get rich quick scheme after another, aided by two other Moroccan buddies and a white Dutch pal.
On the home front, things are not all well as his fetching sister Leila (Touria Haoud) has been cast out of the house by their conservative father for shaming the family, while his brother Samir, married to a Moroccan girl, falls for a Dutch workmate.
The problems Shouf Shouf Habibi! raises are very real, and the situation is bound to get even more complex for Arab and Muslim socio-economic immigrants with the rise of right-wing governments in Europe, especially in the post-September 11 world.
Though the film puts these problems in a comedic context, it doesn’t sweep them under the rug, nor does it offer any revolutionary solutions. It just offers a slightly exaggerated slice of life from the Arab immigrant experience in the Netherlands, though it would have been more interesting if the writer/director had actually been an Arab/Muslim immigrant himself.
W Pustyni i w Puszczy (In Desert and Wilderness) from Poland was also screened. —QAM
