From left: Mohammad Soueid, Al Arabiya, Yosri Fouda, ONTV, Giles Trendle, Al Jazeera. Photo: Rasmus Steen/IMS

The documentary world in the Middle East is buzzing. But where are the European documentaries on Arab TV and vice versa?

With 300 million potential viewers, the market for documentary films in the Arab world is so far untapped by Western television broadcasters. So what does it take for European documentaries to make it onto Arab TV and for Arab documentary filmmakers to break into the Western broadcast markets as well as broaden their potential reach within the Arab region?

With representatives of major broadcasters such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, and the up-and-coming Egyptian channel ONTV on the panel, the scene was set for a lively debate at the seminar on documentary film in the Arab world. The event which took place during the  CPH:DOX Film Festival was organised by International Media Support (IMS) and Danish Broadcast Corporation (DR) to strengthen the dialogue between Middle Eastern and European counterparts.

Breaking of taboos

The creative world of documentary film-making in the Arab world is growing like never before, according to Head of ONTV, Yosri Fouda. ONTV, Egypt’s only privately-owned channel permitted to broadcast news and current affairs in addition to traditional entertainment programmes. Although the station’s budget is but a hundredth of Al Jazeera’s, ONTV has been so successful in its two years of existence that it now produces its own, in-house documentaries.

Yosri Fouda attributes this success to two factors; the creation of Al Jazeera in 1996 and ONTV’s willingness to use young, talented filmmakers. 

- Al Jazeera helped to break the taboos of documentaries as a genre and thereby forced Arab governments to see that the world had changed, Yosri Fouda said.

- Also, ONTV employs young, talented people. The station has produced eight documentaries in the last year and we’ve even been successful to the point where the state-owned TV were beginning to feel a bit edgy about us and the government looked on ONTV with some suspicion.

Documentaries "only democratic current"

- According to Mohammad Soueid, senior producer on the pan-Arabian news channel Al Arabiya,  the documentary film movement in the Arab world has always existed. In fact, it is the “only democratic current” in the Arab world.

Over the last two years, Al Arabiya has focused on in-house documentary film productions about the Arab world aimed at Arab-speaking communities and the commercial market in the Golf. However, there is no system in place for distribution of these films around the Arab world or for Arabiya TV channels to share them.

Productive chaos in Arab world

Film distribution is difficult in the Arab world, Mohammad Soueid explains. In general, Arab television stations are weak partners to Western broadcasters at the production and acquisition level.

- Another difficulty in cooperation between Arab and Western actors on the documentary film market are the different standards, such as author’s rights and high salaries – both of which do not exist in the Arab world.

- Also, a film director in Denmark need not write and produce as well as direct. But in the Arab world, a film director is a one-man show, doing it all, he continues.

 - There is a clash of two understandings of filmmaking and legal plugs in the West. The chaos in the Arab world probably means that more films are produced.

Circular verses linear style of storytelling

The method of narrating also differs substantially between Arab and Western documentaries. Giles Trendle, Manager Acquisitions for Al Jazeera English described the way in which Arab storytelling slowly circles the main point in non-chronological order while the European storytelling style is more linear and brutal, straight to the point. These narrative differences can add to the difficulties of adapting European documentaries to an Arab audience and vice versa.

According to Mohammad Soueid of Al Arabiya, the almost non-existent Arab-Arab cooperation and sharing of documentary film productions between Arab broadcasters and countries is what substantially weakens the Arab documentary scene, emphasises Mohammad Soueid.

Yosri  Fouda and Mohammad Soueid both site political and censorship reasons for the lack of sharing of documentary films in the Arab media and film market. but they agree that politics is not stopping the market - it is just slowing it down.