Sabah: Writer/Director Ruba Nadda's Timely Success in Connecting Canada

Canadian artists often draw inspiration from the vast expanse of land, an at times overwhelming and isolating natural setting that characterizes a country still self-creating, replete with possibilities. In comparison, Canadian writer/director Ruba Nadda in Sabah (2005), her first major film after a series of shorts, avoids broad external landscapes, drawing inspiration from primarily interior locales: homes, a swimming pool, a coffee shop, a workshop, a disco entrance, as well as intermittent panoramas of the Toronto skyline and select shots of city streets and parks. Within these urban settings, Nadda traverses infra- and i/tfer-culturally the sometimes difficult terrain separating family and community members. Working with established filmmaker Atom Egoyan, as executive co-producer, and Egoyan's spouse, award-winning actress Arsinee Khanjian, in the lead role of Sabah, along with other cast and crew members, Nadda has created a timely work that signals promising pathways for connecting Canada's increasingly diverse population. Focusing on the Arab Muslim immigrant family, in particular, Nadda, who is herself of Syrian/Palestinian descent, sets her film in Toronto, a notably diverse city with a sizeable Arab Muslim population. In portraying issues related to this community, Nadda engages with Canada's evolving--and debated--multicultural vision. Currently, the Canadian government (at the federal and provincial levels) seeks to assure the various ethnic and religious communities in Canada that they are welcome and encouraged to extol their heritage while at the same time recognize the common values they share with other citizens and residents in a democratic society. Canada was, in fact, in 1988, the first country to pass a national Multiculturalism Act, which recognizes as a fundamental characteristic of Canadian society with an integral role in the decision-making process of the federal government.... [The Act] sought to assist in the preservation of culture and language, to reduce discrimination, to enhance awareness and understanding, and to promote culturally sensitive institutional change at the federal level (Dewing and Leman 6-7). Furthermore, in an effort to accommodate cultural distinctiveness and equality, the Act specified the right of all to identify with the heritage of their choice, yet retain 'full and equitable participation ... in all aspects of Canadian society' (7). Fourteen years later, in 2002, the government declared June 27th as Canadian Multiculturalism Day. In 2005, the government introduced an action plan to strengthen social cohesion, further Canada's human rights framework and demonstrate federal leadership in the fight against racism and hate-motivated crime (9). Also in 2005 Canada signed the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions: The Convention recognizes that books, films, television programs, and other goods and services have a distinctive nature that goes beyond their commercial value. It also reaffirms the right of countries to take measures to foster diverse expressions (9). It is thus not surprising that Nadda received funding for making Sabah from Telefilm Canada, a Crown Corporation of the federal government. However, positive as Canada's stated goals are, the official vision of a mosaic has not gone unchallenged. Some critics assess that it has created a separatist mentality ethnic groups rather than an integrated state; others fear that core Canadian values, culture and identity, along with the country's history, are being lost. Meanwhile, defenders of Canada's approach to multiculturalism argue that it encourages integration by telling immigrants they do not have to choose between preserving their heritage and participating in Canadian society. Rather, they can do both (11). Ruba Nadda's film, Sabah, supports the latter viewpoint, with the proviso that one should feel free to bend and adapt inherited norms in order to strike a reasonable balance between worlds. …

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