''Alephia 2053'' is a 2021 Arabic-language animated feature set in a desaturated future

Arab world The Arab world ( '), formally the Arab homeland ( '), also known as the Arab nation ( '), the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, comprises a large group of countries, mainly located in West Asia and North Africa. While the majority of people in ...

ruled by a

despotic In political science, despotism () is a form of government in which a single entity rules with absolute power. Normally, that entity is an individual, the despot (as in an autocracy), but societies which limit respect and power to specific gr ...

dictator.

Release and reception

Depicting a

dystopia A dystopia (lit. "bad place") is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. It is an imagined place (possibly state) in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmen ...

n future in which a group of activists overthrows an oppressive regime. The film was released on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

on 22 March 2021. '' L'Orient-Le Jour'' described it as the first fictional animated feature film for adults in Arabic.

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considered it as a small revolution in Arab cinema and animation.

Production

The animated feature was created by a Lebanese company, Spring Entertainment, with partial backing from French animation studio Malil'Art. The soundtrack and most of its graphical animation was done in Lebanon. The film was produced by Rabi' Sweidan, Marwan Harb and Jules Kassas and illustrated and directed by Jorj Abou Mhaya. According to Sweidan, the repression, resistance and revolution portrayed in ''Alephia'' does not depict the history of a single country but instead draws from familiar social conditions around the world. Multiple sources described the events of the feature as being similar to the events of the

2011 Arab Spring The Arab Spring () was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in Tunisia in response to corruption and economic stagnation. From Tunisia, ...

Reception

After the release in March 2021, the film quickly went viral on YouTube and other streaming services. As of 29 April, the feature had accrued over 8 million views on YouTube.

References

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External links

Lebanese Animated Thriller ‘Alephia 2053’ Imagines A World Without Tyranny on Animation World Network
2021 in Lebanon 2021 animated films Lebanese animated films 2020s Arabic-language films 2021 films