The Dupes

The Dupes / Al Makhdu’un
Tawfik Saleh, Syria, 1972, 107’

A film about three generations of Palestinians trying to escape to Kuwait becomes an allegory of the multifaceted hardships of Palestinian existence.

The painfully topical film The Dupes tells the story of three Palestinians of three generations who want to flee to Kuwait each due to different personal circumstances all due to the unbearableness of staying on their home soil, and the desire for a better life (just the basic level of a human-worthy existence). The realism, poetically served in unique filmic lines and stanzas, extremely directly presents the physical, emotional and spiritual experience of the protagonists and grows into an allegory of the multifaceted hardship of Palestinian existence. 

The film is based on a novel Men in the Sun by the Palestinian writer and freedom fighter Ghassan Kanafani, whose work dedicated to culture and politics, and the struggle of the Palestinian people is deeply rooted in the Palestinian and Arab consciousness (the spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine died at the age of only thirty-six as a victim of assassination by Israeli intelligence). It is the first feature film from the Arab world that shows Palestinian refugees as the protagonists of their own story. In a way a pan-Arab film – it is about defectors from Palestine on their way from Iraq to Kuwait (and indirectly about the role of other Arab nations in the Palestinian issue); shot by an Egyptian director in a Syrian production it is not only a powerful voice given to the oppressed, but also a comprehensive portrait of reality revealing the political, social and financial challenges they face.