'We've got 200 million Arab speakers here, let's make films for them,' says a Lebanese director whose film topped the Beirut box office.
It is Lebanese and conquered the Americans - at least in the Lebanese box office. Bosta ? Autobus, a film by Philippe Aractingi, is an unlikely success on paper. A musical comedy involving a Lebanese émigré who returns to create a modern dabke troupe (a famous Lebanese dance), defying traditionalists bent on preserving the dance's ancient style.
Mainstream cinema
The troupe is driven around Lebanon in a bus - the bosta - an old school bus once used to chauffer pupils to a utopian mixed-sect school, and symbolically, emerged unscathed from Lebanon's 17-year war.
Bosta is the first Lebanese film in at least a decade to have sold more tickets than the usual Hollywood fare in Beirut's mainstream cinemas.
"On the weekends we were getting in 2,500 people, while the US films were getting in 1,500. That's not a modest success," Aractingi laughs, "it's a victory".
The film is entertaining, if only to watch the parody of the faded, shallow Lebanese diva with her Sri Lankan maid trying to resurrect her career - ending up finding her self esteem.
But through the infectious singing and dancing, Aractingi has a serious message, and it took him years to make it.
"The bus is a symbol, a vehicle to go into the different identities of Lebanon. We want to talk about what unites us, not what divides us."
Symbolic
"The utopian school is a symbol of Lebanon before the war," destroyed by a member of the dance troupe, and one of the school's former pupils, who participated in the conflict.
He said riding the bus, dancing together, was a cry for nation building.
"We all have an experience of war that's different. But what unites the Lebanese is that we all have the wounds of war. Now we have to heal them."
Aractingi financed the $1.2 million (about Dh4.4 million) film in three years, through private investors, using a business model, bypassing the usual route of European cultural grants.
He said there was a lesson in that for other filmmakers.
"There are 200 million people here who speak the same language. We are no longer forced to see American films with American actors."
He said Arab cinema industry professionals had to feel empowered enough to make entertaining films for Arabs.
"A lot of directors here have a complex towards the West. They care about what [Westerners] will think. I lived there and it's not better than here. We've got 200 million Arab speakers here. Let's make films for them."
