Emirati Filmmaker Unsettles Traditions, Exposes Hidden Lives
An Emirati filmmaker is pushing boundaries and bypassing state censors by delicately unraveling a story about a traditional Arab family grappling with issues of homosexual love, gender identity, sectarianism and women’s rights. The movie focuses on a conservative Iraqi family who begin seeing and unearthing one another’s secrets after the family matriarch goes blind and dies. What makes the film “Only Men Go To the Grave” particularly avant-garde is that the homosexual characters are not simply supporting characters or portrayed as Westernized or globalized elites, like past characters in other …