With a swag of international guests and plenty of sold-out screenings, the Sydney Arab Film Festival has left its mark on Sydney’s competitive film festival scene. Yvette Poshoglian was there and has this warning – book in advance.

This year’s Sydney Arab Film Festival showcased the largest and most ambitious program of Arabic filmmaking ever screened in Sydney or indeed Australia. Featuring local and international artists, film and documentary makers, the 2007 program ran for over a month from mid-February to mid-March.

Many of the international guests journeyed with their films to Australia for the first time. Nizar Hassan, a filmmaker and producer from Nazareth, Palestine was excited to learn of such a focussed film festival in Australia, where he could show his work to a new and diverse audience.

“I did not know there was such an interest in Sydney!” he said.

Co-Director of the Festival, Mouna Zaylah, believes this year’s program was a hit with the public. Over the month of screenings in 2007, the Festival offered special Sunday sessions including film forums where directors spoke about the how and why of the filmmaking process. This format has proven the most popular with the public, said Zaylah.

“We’ve had a sell-out crowd for our Sunday events, which is fantastic,” she said.

Bringing the filmmakers and documentary makers to Australia was the easiest part said Zaylah. “It’s the funding and creating the partnerships that’s the hardest part. We need more contributors.”

The Festival has its home in Sydney’s west and has grown exponentially since its inaugural year in 2001. Beginning life as a three-day Arabic film event at the Roxy Cinema in Parramatta — it grew in 2004 to a larger program across more venues, incorporating local Arabic films and an international flavour. This year, with growing support from the NSW government and other sponsors including Information and Cultural Exchange, an arts and cultural organisation dedicated to Sydney’s west, the Festival ran 48 Australian and international Arabic films, as well as forums with guest filmmakers and journalists.

The subject matter of many of the films was naturally topical given the current situation in the Middle East. Hassan’s film Invasion (Ejteyah) was one of the most anticipated and controversial films at this year’s Festival. His documentary of the Jenin massacre offers an unflinching look at the aftermath of the bulldozing of the entire village of Jenin in the West Bank by the Israeli army in April 2002. In a provocative twist, Hassan focuses his filmmaker’s gaze on the reflections of an Israeli bulldozer driver at Jenin, offering the audience a new insight into the complexity of emotions and realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Another filmmaker tackling these harsh realities is Eliane Raheb, a documentary maker from Lebanon and Artistic Director of Ayam Beirut al-Cinemaiya (Cinema Days of Beirut). The Beirut festival ran last year in August even amidst the war with Israel. “2006 was the year we had the most media, sadly,” said Raheb.

Like Nizar Hassan, this is also her first time in Australia. So Near Yet So Far, one of Raheb’s films screening at the Festival, looks at the impact of daily death on young children in Jordan and Palestine. Yet Raheb, as both filmmaker and a film festival director, manages to remain optimistic, arguing that there is an “energy and dynamism” to Arabic filmmaking. She said it is this belief that motivates her to continue to make documentaries of the Arab experience in the Middle East.

Local Australian Arabic films such as Jammin’ in the Middle E, debuted at the Festival, alongside contemporary and classic films from Morocco, Egypt and Lebanon, attesting to the rich history of Arabic film. Events took place across the west in venues such as Parramatta’s Riverside Theatres, the Liverpool Regional Museum and Liverpool TAFE.

Running concurrently to the film sessions was an audiovisual installation by Arab artists at Liverpool Regional Museum. Kon Gouriotis, Director of Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, believes western Sydney is the audience that needs to see Arabic films.

“We have constantly curated shows about different Arabic communities,” he said of both the Centre and the Liverpool Regional Museum. “Arabic is the second-most spoken language in Sydney’s south and west.”

Noting this year’s sell-out crowds, Gouriotis said that “the subject matter is hitting the mark.”

But in an increasingly-crowded Sydney film scene, is there room alongside the French, German and Spanish Film Festivals for an Arabic Film Festival?

“Arabic films are not shown in any other mainstream film events,” said Mouna Zaylah. “There has been no single Arabic Film Festival before this.”

Zaylah believes it is answering the needs of Sydney’s west. “This Festival doesn’t isolate the community in the west, where many Australian Arabs live.”