The place and the larger context from which a film says something is as, or even more, important as what is being said.
In a liberal country, Mahmoud Sabbhagh’s Barakah Meets Barakah would not certainly be counted as a great work of cinema. But, to make this in a country like Saudi Arabia, with its strict moral codes, holding up a mirror to them, is a different ball game.
It has another first to its credit — the first romantic comedy from a country where the meeting of the opposite sex without someone accompanying them is prohibited. The desperation of the couple to meet, and the lack of safe places for the same, is central to Barakah Meets Barakah .
Barakah, who himself is a kind of moral police for the municipality, falls in love with Bibi, a model and an Instagram star, who posts images online without revealing her face, due to the prevailing laws. Fearful of the law, they meet, acting as strangers, at art exhibitions, at the billing queue at a department store, and on adjacent swings in a park.
In a telling scene, Barakah’s own law enforcement team closes down a supposedly ‘liberal’ cafe where youth meet and discuss things over a coffee.
With no avenues to meet, Barakah suggests Bibi that they get engaged, a suggestion which she rejects as being too outdated. The satire, with its light treatment, hides the underlying anger, which comes across in the occasional monologues of Barakah which accompany old photographs of a much more liberal place. He questions his elders for their lack of resistance and for normalising the clampdowns on individual liberty with their silence.
The film starts with a sarcastic note that says: ‘The pixelation you will experience during this film is totally normal. It is not a commentary on censorship.’ Barakah meets Barakah is certainly a part of the struggle against the pixelation of our thoughts, ideas and love. The film is Saudi Arabia’s second ever entry to the Best Foreign Language film at the Academy Awards.
