As the 38th annual Toronto International Film Festival heads into its second week, one of the city’s most influential filmmakers heads toward his fifth week in the Cairo prison cell he shares with 39 others.
Thankfully, the one happening is not conducting itself in isolation from the other.
TIFF as an organization has a mixed record when it comes to relevant political action. When directors find themselves censored or persecuted in their home countries, TIFF often issues press releases affirming support for free expression and solidarity with those punished for exercising it.
On the other hand, when the festival chose Tel Aviv as the focus of its inaugural City To City program in 2009, organizers seemed genuinely taken aback that some viewed the selection as controversial.
The director who pricked TIFF’s awareness in that case was John Greyson, who pulled his short from the festival in protest. That year, TIFF became as much a subject of disagreement as it has ever been, the dispute expressed in duelling letters signed by different groups of notables who either criticized or applauded the festival’s decision.
Now Greyson is once again responsible for TIFF having to turn its attention away from itself. This time, however, he’s not the activist but the subject of the activism.
On August 16, Greyson and Tarek Loubani, a London-based physician who teaches at Western University, were arrested by Egyptian authorities after apparently entering a police station to ask for directions. Although it is believed the pair may have been in violation of the country’s curfew law, they have not been charged with any offence. Authorities, however, have implausibly insinuated that they were involved in an effort to attack a police station.
Even more troublingly, the Egyptian bureaucracy seems in no hurry to let them go. They were on their way to Gaza, where Loubani hoped to provide medical assistance and Greyson to make a documentary about it.
Canadian consular officials and the lawyer hired by their families have thus far been unable to expedite their release.
According to Greyson’s sister Cecilia Greyson, the two are sharing a cell with 38 other detainees (including teachers, doctors and a fork-lift operator) that has one tap and one toilet. “In 21 days,” she wrote in an online update last Friday, “they have been allowed into the outside courtyard only once, for 30 minutes.”
The campaign she’s running with a coalition of supporters has garnered dozens of statements of support from a broad swath of individuals and organizations. And one of the first was from TIFF:
“John is a long-time friend of TIFF, and we are concerned for his well-being and hope that he can quickly return to Canada safe and sound,” the statement reads.
On September 4, the night before TIFF’s opening gala screenings, actor/director Sarah Polley showed up at the Toronto Film Critics Association cocktail party with a fistful of buttons bearing a simple message: “#FreeTarekandJohn #TIFF13.”
This became a news story in itself.
“It got painted as my own personal campaign, like I had gone out and made the buttons all by myself,” Polley tells me. “But it’s actually a really big group of us.”
Polley asked TIFF programmers to wear the buttons and mention the two when introducing films.
“I know they’ve been doing really great work, like going to parties and giving them out at cocktails,” she says. (Atom Egoyan mentioned the pair while introducing his film Devil’s Knot, but it’s less clear whether programmers have been discussing them in their intros.)
“We hope no opportunity will be lost to take advantage of having so many eyes on the festival,” Polley says. “And so far all signs have been great that that’s what [TIFF organizers are] doing.”
Cecilia Greyson concurs that TIFF has been “100 per cent” behind the campaign. “Which is wonderful we’re very grateful for that.”
TIFF helped organize the September 10 press conference at the Lightbox and distributed an advisory for the event through its own media channels. The release carried both the #FreeTarekandJohn and TIFF logos at the top.
Among the speakers were Egoyan, novelist Michael Ondaatje, documentary great Alex Gibney and Lightbox artistic director Noah Cowan representing TIFF.
They released a letter of support with more than 300 signatures from high-profile film, literary and academic figures, including Noam Chomsky, Colin Firth, Alice Munro, Charlize Theron, Judith Butler and Mike Leigh.
As TIFF’S Cowan explained, “We find the expression of ideas, the creation of art and even the idea of festivals are impossible when our artists are in jail.”
What you can do
Visit tarekandjohn.com
Sign the petition at change.org/freetarekandjohn
Contact the Egyptian Embassy in Ottawa to demand their immediate release: 613-234-4931, 613-234-4935 and egyptemb@sympatico.ca
jonathang@nowtoronto.com | @goldsbie
