 On Tuesday, my day-off, I decided to go and see a film Il Padre e Lo Starniero (The Father and the Foreigner) showing at Dana Mall, an Italian film that I certainly would recommend. Dana Mall, which was opposite the military encampment near the former Pearl Roundabout has probably been the worst affected of Bahrain’s various malls by the “troubles” and I found myself the only one in the cinema. The main characters in the film are two fathers of very disabled children, who meet at a therapy centre. One is Italian who hasn’t really connected with his son the other is the foreigner, Syrian, who though involved in business that the Italian security services find deeply suspicious clearly really loves his son “the light of his life”. A friendship develops between them that transforms the way the Italian responds to his son beyond a duty of care to real love. An appropriate film in the week of the Paralympics which seems to have caught peoples’ imaginations as much as the Olympics: a celebration of what people can do. |
On Tuesday, my day-off, I decided to go and see a film Il Padre e Lo Starniero (The Father and the Foreigner) showing at Dana Mall, an Italian film that I certainly would recommend. Dana Mall, which was opposite the military encampment near the former Pearl Roundabout has probably been the worst affected of Bahrain’s various malls by the “troubles” and I found myself the only one in the cinema. The main characters in the film are two fathers of very disabled children, who meet at a therapy centre. One is Italian who hasn’t really connected with his son the other is the foreigner, Syrian, who though involved in business that the Italian security services find deeply suspicious clearly really loves his son “the light of his life”. A friendship develops between them that transforms the way the Italian responds to his son beyond a duty of care to real love. An appropriate film in the week of the Paralympics which seems to have caught peoples’ imaginations as much as the Olympics: a celebration of what people can do.