An early hand-tinted adaptation of Ali Baba.
A World War I British Army patrol is crossing the Mesopotamian desert when their commanding officer, the only one who knows their destination, is killed by the bullet of unseen bandits. The patrol's sergeant keeps them heading north on the assumption that they will hit their brigade. They stop for the night at an oasis and awaken the next morning to find their horses stolen, their sentry dead, the oasis surrounded and survival difficult.
Two bumbling magicians help a Middle Eastern prince regain his rightful throne from his despotic uncle.
Legendary pirate and adventurer Sinbad is in single-minded pursuit of two things: beautiful women and a substance called Greek Fire--an early version of gunpowder.
In 25 AD, Judah Ben-Hur, a Jew in ancient Judea, opposes the occupying Roman empire. Falsely accused by a Roman childhood friend-turned-overlord of trying to kill the Roman governor, he is put into slavery and his mother and sister are taken away as prisoners.
Centuries ago in the Orient, the fiscal exactions on the people lead to a revolt against the usurper of the throne, and the empowerment of a new leader.
In the Middle East, circa 1860s, the evil Omar seeks to become Khadive by killing off his adversaries and by marrying the reluctant Fawzia, favorite niece of the current Khadive. Omar's brutal policies result in the death of a young woman named Laila. Laila's brother, Kerim, then becomes Omar's sworn enemy.
The film documents modern slave trade through a number of African countries, under dictatorship rule. The filming was conducted both in public places, and sometimes with the use of hidden cameras, for high impact scenes of nudity, sex, and violence - and a few surprises, as slaves made out of peregrins to Asia, and slave traders paid in traveller checks.
A highly fictionalized account of the first Serbian foreign-lottery winner - Jovanče Micić, a merchant from Jagodina who went on to travel the whole world in the company of his Hungarian mistress and Montenegrin friend with a wooden leg.
During the Cold War, John Goldfarb crashes his spy plane in the Middle East and is taken prisoner by the local government. His captor, King Fawz, soon discovers that Goldfarb used to be a college football star. So he issues him an ultimatum: coach his country's football team, or Fawz will surrender him to the Russians. Goldfarb teams up with undercover reporter Jenny Ericson, and together they plot to escape their dangerous situation.
Harry Dean is a career burglar set on stealing a piece of priceless art from the world's wealthiest man, Mr. Shahbandar. With the help of exotic showgirl Nicole Chang, he concocts the perfect scheme for how the robbery should go and lays it out point by point. However, when the team tries to execute the plan, perfection and reality don't quite match up, and Harry's vision begins to unravel in this twisty tale of a heist gone wrong.
A disgraced treasury agent Mike Rand, who teams with his boss to halt a Red Chinese plot to destroy the free world by flooding the market with opium and turning everyone into addicts. Along the way he manages to bed junkie Lou, get into various fights and destroy the refinery that is ending out the drugs.
A secret agent is sent to the Middle East to destroy a gang of assassins.
The construction of a dam on the Euphrates River is an example of a country’s economic development. Through grandly composed images, rhythmic editing, and aestheticized details, the director demonstrates his admiration for the interwar avant-garde. The film is a celebration of the new, while at the same time showing a traditional way of life and calling attention to working conditions; it is a refrain-like evocation of an arid country that explores the difficult lot of Syria’s rural inhabitants.
The first documentary to present an unabashed critique of the impact of the Syrian government’s agricultural and land reforms, Everyday Life in a Syrian Village delivers a powerful jab at the state’s conceit of redressing social and economic inequities.
In the late 1960s, Dhofar rose up against the British-backed Sultanate of Oman, in a democratic, Marxist-Leninist guerrilla movement. Director Heiny Srour and her team crossed 500 miles of desert and mountains by foot, under bombardment by the British Royal Air Force, to reach the conflict zone and capture this rare record of a now mostly-forgotten war.
Discusses the history of the Middle East. Contrasts old ways with the new in agriculture, industry, etc. in emphasizing the changing image of this part of the world.
Handsomely-mounted historical epic concerns the birth of the Islamic faith and the story of the Prophet Muhammad.
In May 1974, the Israeli Air Force carried out an extermination operation against the Palestinian refugee camp Nabatiyeh. With this as a starting point, it is reviewed how the last 50 years of Zionist colonization of Palestine have partly led to the establishment of the state of Israel, partly to the expulsion of a people, the Palestinians, from their land. The film shows scenes of daily life in Palestinian refugee camps. We hear various of the inhabitants talk about their desire to return to their country, and we follow how the resistance movement works to free women from their traditional backward role. At the same time, the emergence of the armed resistance struggle is analysed, and the significance of the latest military technological developments for guerilla wars in the 3rd world is explained.