Event Details

Date/Time: 

Nov 7 2008 5:00pm

Price: 

$10

Where: 

[Check http://www.laemmle.com/viewtheatre.php?thid=4 for showtimes]
Laemmle's Music Hall
9036 Wilshire Blvd.
Beverly Hills CA 90211
info 310.274.6869

Highly recommended by those who have seen it locally, "Captain Abu Raed" is the official Jordanian entry in the Best Foreign Film category. "The Kingdom of Jordan is joining the race for the foreign-language Oscar along with the Netherlands, Taiwan and the Philippines. An independent committee of industryites set up by Jordan's Royal Film Commission chose writer-director Amin Matalqa's "Captain Abu Raed" as the country's Oscar player." —Variety report

The film follows an airport janitor, mistaken for an airline pilot by local children, who weaves fantastical stories to offer them inspiration and hope.

According to the producers, "Captain Abu Raed is a universal story of friendship, inspiration and heroism set in contemporary Jordan. Abu Raed is a lonely janitor at Amman’s International Airport. Never having realized his dreams of seeing the world, he experiences it vicariously through books and brief encounters with travelers.

"Finding a discarded Captain’s hat in the trash at work one day, he is followed by a neighborhood boy who spots him wearing it as he walks home. The next morning he wakes up to find a group of neighborhood children at his door, believing him to be an airline pilot. And thus the friendship begins. Happy for the company and attention, he takes the children to colorful places around the world through his fictional stories and inspires them to believe in their own ambitions."

The film won an audience award at Sundance and was financed by Jordan's Paper & Pen Films and produced by Gigapix Studios' David Pritchard, along with Matalqa and Laith Majali. It received enthusiastic response when screened recently during the Arab Film Festival.

Captain Abu Raed: "A humanistic triumph" says the Hollywood Reporter