In this monthly column, we explore the latest productions from Arab and international cinema, offering a guide that combines introduction and criticism as it surveys new films on the big screen, from popular entertainment to art-house cinema across every genre.
Crazy Rich, Incredibly Broke
Director: Ahmed El Gendy
Screenplay: Ayman Wattar, Bader Al-Assaf
Country of production: Saudi Arabia
The Saudi comedy Crazy Rich, Incredibly Broke, released exclusively on Netflix in the Middle East and North Africa, topped the platform’s most-watched list within 24 hours of its debut. A collaboration between Egyptian director Ahmed El Gendy and screenwriters Ayman Wattar and Bader Al-Assaf, the film follows the snobbish AlThahabi family, whose comfortable existence is suddenly upended by a financial crisis.
Desperate to maintain the lavish lifestyle that has long defined them, the family becomes trapped in a succession of increasingly absurd situations. Rather than reducing the family’s predicament to a string of amusing mishaps, the screenplay uses humour to expose and ridicule the attitudes that have shaped its members’ lives, including that of Sultan AlThahabi, played by Rashed Al Shamrani.
The film’s original Arabic title, AlMahaitiya, captures the satire’s essence. In Saudi and Gulf dialects, a mahayti is someone who engages in hiyat, ostentatious boasting about wealth, generosity, social standing, or courage, sometimes exaggerating well beyond the truth to attract attention and gain prestige.
Yet the film goes further than mocking those who flaunt wealth they do not possess. It exposes the anxieties behind such behaviour, particularly the fear of gossip and losing social standing. The family’s determination to cling to its former image reflects a society that values appearances over substance, where admitting financial hardship amounts to acknowledging defeat, especially in the eyes of relatives and acquaintances.
Digger
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Screenplay: Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone, Alejandro González Iñárritu
Countries of production: US, Mexico, UK
Another exploration of capitalism’s seductive power comes from Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger. The Mexican director’s films often examine the seemingly arbitrary forces shaping our lives, suggesting that even the most inscrutable workings of fate can ultimately be traced back to cause and effect.
The film centres on Digger Rockwell, played by Tom Cruise, a billionaire oil magnate who sees the world as little more than an extension of his wealth and influence, even as the environmental consequences of a catastrophe he helped create begin to emerge. Reckless Arctic oil exploration has caused a vast mass of ice to break away, threatening the entire European continent.
Iñárritu, however, does not treat the incident as simply a natural disaster. He presents it as the inevitable consequence of an economic and political system driven by the relentless pursuit of profit, despite being fully aware of the devastating price the planet must pay. The director uses vast theatrical sets, moving screens, and deliberately artificial visual compositions to create a world where reality and fiction become increasingly hard to distinguish.
Departing from environmental drama conventions, the screenplay embraces black comedy and occasionally ventures into outright absurdity. Cruise delivers a markedly different performance, portraying Rockwell as an almost cartoonish figure whose personality seems larger than life. It is as though the film gives capitalist arrogance a human form, letting it speak, shout, and justify itself before the world.
The film also develops parallel arguments through a series of satirical scenarios. The US president, politicians, advisers, and businesspeople become embroiled in a desperate search for a solution that protects their interests before safeguarding humanity. Meanwhile, the screenplay’s use of meta-cinema (a filmmaking style that makes a movie self-aware) prompts viewers to reconsider everything they have seen, placing the characters and events within a larger narrative game concerned with the process of storytelling itself.
One of the film’s clearest criticisms is aimed at audiences and a society so attached to its established way of life that it refuses to let go.
Despite a production budget exceeding $150mn, the film had a disastrous box office opening. Critics were sharply divided, with some even describing Cruise’s performance as the worst of his career.
Animals
Director: Ben Affleck
Screenplay: Billy Ray, Connor O. McIntyre, Ben Affleck
Country of production: US
This year appears to mark a significant turning point in Ben Affleck’s career. Just months before the release of his latest film, Netflix completed its acquisition of his startup InterPositive, which specialises in developing AI tools for filmmakers, in a deal worth approximately $587mn. Affleck also joined the streaming platform as an adviser.
In Animals, recently released on Netflix and in select cinemas, Affleck returns to crime and suspense with a Los Angeles mayoral candidate whose life is turned upside down when his son is kidnapped, and a ransom is demanded. He faces choices that threaten both his political ambitions and his personal life. Having already spent a substantial sum on his election campaign, he cannot afford the ransom.
Despite seemingly having everything a man could wish for, including wealth, family, power, and love, he is forced to choose between two courses of action. He could follow the law and report the kidnapping to the police, potentially putting his son at greater risk while also winning sympathy from voters. Alternatively, he could raise the money illegally, jeopardising his political future and his entire election campaign if the truth reached the press.
Affleck also stars in the film. The project was originally set to star Matt Damon, but he withdrew because of a scheduling conflict with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Rather than search for a replacement, Affleck decided to take the lead in front of and behind the camera, as he had in Argo in 2012.
Although the film’s most immediate message concerns the illusory power of authority, its broader premise explores an ethical dilemma rooted in human nature. How far can people remain faithful to their values and principles when a devastating crisis threatens the life of someone they love?
The Social Reckoning
Director: Aaron Sorkin
Writer: Aaron Sorkin
Country of production: US
In his latest film, The Social Reckoning, American filmmaker Aaron Sorkin examines Facebook’s impact on society. At its centre is Frances Haugen, a data scientist and software engineer whose revelations as a former Facebook employee sparked international controversy and shook the digital empire to its foundations.
Haugen, played by Mikey Madison, leaked thousands of confidential internal Facebook documents to The Wall Street Journal, exposing the company’s willingness to prioritise profits and certain corporate policies over user safety and personal data protection.
She is neither a business rival of Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jeremy Strong, nor an investigative journalist seeking to expose an organisation from the outside. Her testimony is powerful because she worked within the very system she later challenged before deciding to reveal what she had witnessed, even if her motives remained unclear.
The film treats Facebook as a social and political force rather than simply a commercial enterprise. Its algorithms have developed an almost uncanny ability to determine what millions see, profoundly shaping public opinion by amplifying anger and fear and manipulating the flow of conflicting information. In doing so, they reshape the environment in which opinions and attitudes, including political convictions, take shape.
The screenplay explores political polarisation, misinformation, definitions and standards of extremism, and how digital platforms influence children and teenagers. It also examines how social media networks shape the wider public mood, evoking the atmosphere that preceded the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Sorkin, screenwriter of The Social Network back in 2010, thus moves from chronicling the emergence of this powerful institution to questioning its influence and holding it to account.
Viewed together, the two films reveal a shift reflected in their titles. In the first, Sorkin chose the collective concept of a social network, suggesting a project built around communication and the potential to serve the wider community. In The Social Reckoning, the emphasis shifts to a reckoning with the consequences for individuals, revealing the medium's darker side. What was once conceived as a tool for bringing people together has become a force that can influence individuals and shape their awareness, behaviour, and lives.
Diary of a Chambermaid
Director: Radu Jude
Screenplay: Radu Jude, based on the novel by Octave Mirbeau
Countries of production: France, Romania
In his latest film, Diary of a Chambermaid, Romanian director Radu Jude revisits the celebrated novel of the same name, written by Octave Mirbeau more than 125 years ago. The book has attracted numerous filmmakers throughout cinema history, including Jean Renoir and Luis Buñuel. Jude, however, indulges his familiar penchant for dismantling cinematic conventions, both visually and technically.
Here, Gianina, played by Ana Dumitrașcu, is a young Romanian woman working for a bourgeois family in Bordeaux while her daughter remains far away in Romania.
The maid soon discovers the darker side of the seemingly glamorous world inhabited by the wealthy, uncovering what she describes in her diary as ‘moral decay’, with lust, sadism, and repressed desires concealed beneath the respectable façade of the upper classes. The traditional class struggle takes on a new dimension in modern Europe, where wealth is concentrated in the West while cheap labour continues to come from the East.
