As I was waiting for the film to start I listened to two couples talk about the Arab films they had seen this year at the festival.

“Is this the first one you’ve seen?” a voice from behind me asks.

“Oh, no we’ve been to about 20 of them,” answers the lady next to me.

“Wow, have you enjoyed them?”

“I think it has been about 60/40 - 60% of the films have been good and 40% have not been good,” interjects a man two seats from me.

“The Flower of Oblivion was very good,” the lady next to me adds.

“A Perfect Day was not a day and not perfect. It was boring with long pauses between the dialogue.”

The lady leans over to me and says, “We can say this because the film is Lebanese and we are from Lebanon.”

Our attention is then directed to the front where the Arab Film Festival representatives welcome us to California Theatre in Berkeley and introduce the first film.This begins my first night at the Berkeley portion of the Arab Film Festival where for the next two and one half hours I will be taken to Israel, and the difficult situation in that part of the Arab world.