The Dupes
61st New York Film Festival
September 29 - October 15, 2023
An excruciatingly suspenseful and eminently modern work of political cinema that evokes The Wages of Fear and Kafka in equal measure, this 1972 masterpiece follows three Palestinian refugees as they agree to a questionable-seeming plan to secretly cross the border from Iraq to Kuwait in search of employment.
Set in the 1950s and adapted from assassinated artist, writer, and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leader Ghassan Kanafani’s 1962 novella Men in the Sun, Tewfik Saleh’s 1972 masterpiece follows three Palestinian refugees—each man representing a different generation—as they seek safe passage from Iraq to Kuwait, where they hope to secure work and money to send to their families back home. Short on options to achieve this goal, they agree to a questionable plan to get smuggled in, and the possibility of building better lives for themselves grows ever more improbable. An excruciatingly suspenseful and eminently modern work of political cinema that evokes The Wages of Fear and Kafka in equal measure, The Dupes is one of Arab cinema’s most astonishing achievements. A Janus Films release.
Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with the National Film Organization and the family of Tewfik Saleh. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
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