For many years, the Arab presence at the Cannes Film Festival has been predicable and tiresome. While the number of participating films has substantially increased, the all-too-familiar themes, subjects and forms remained unchanged. But this was not the case in 2019 - or at least not entirely.

This year, the independently run sidebars of the festival, known as Critics' Week and Directors' Fortnight, demonstrated a boldness and unpredictability - even frivolity – in their choice of films, which was absent from the official line-up, including the main competition.

This was especially obvious when it came to Arab productions. The official selection opted for the obvious. Critics' Week and Directors' Fortnight, on the other hand, selected a deliciously acerbic religious satire, a brilliantly opaque thriller, and possibly the most bonkers Arab picture that has been screened on the French Riviera.

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“We’re living in a time in which I feel a sense of urgency,” says Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian author of Americanah and the viral 2012 TEDx Talk “We Should All Be Feminists,” a slogan that has reverberated its way into a Beyoncé song and onto tote bags and Dior t-shirts. This month, she has again merged personal aesthetics with political values in a collaboration with the fine jewelry brand Foundrae: all of the retail proceeds from her “Freedom of Expression” medallion, which employs Foundrae’s signature lexicon of dainty symbols, will benefit PEN America, a nonprofit that promotes the intersection of literature and human rights. “I used to joke, many years ago, thank God for PEN because if the Nigerian government ever throws me in prison at least somebody will care,” says Adichie. Today, she’s savoring Edith Wharton novels and spending time with her daughter to combat the constant barrage of outraging news. As she says, “our time here is short and we need to make the most of it.”

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