The Middle Geeks

What would you do to serve your country? Is engaging in propaganda patriotic or just embedding more lies to sell the populace? These are the questions acclaimed Swedish-Egyptian director Tarik Saleh explores in the final entry in his Cairo Trilogy, "Eagles of the Republic", where George Fahmy (Fares Fares) is a famous Egyptian actor recruited to appear as the country's president Abdel Fattah el-Si...

What happened to Katie?!? That's the question at the forefront throughout Lee Cronin's The Mummy , a movie that should really be called Egyptian Exorcist or Evil Dead in Egypt . But even though this film features Egyptian and Arab actors in key supporting roles and takes place partially in Egypt, how well does it really do at representing the land and its people, and is it truly an improvement on...

Annemarie Jacir is a legend in Palestinian cinema. From acclaimed works like Salt of the Sea, Wajib , and more, her latest work, Palestine 36 , is an epic tale of resistance that reverberates strongly today. Starring Hiam Abbass , Yasmine Al Massri , Saleh Bakri , Jeremy Irons , Robert Aramayo , Liam Cunningham , Karim Daoud Anaya , and others, it comes out in US theaters this weekend, and we were...

We're live once again at Awesome Con in Washington D.C.! Joined by our friends Zaina, Dary, and Ali, this year we're discussing SWANA representation in Fantasy and Sci-Fi, the barriers we continue to face, why this may be more of a narrative problem than a representation problem, and how the bad representation on screen is informed by and reflective of real world interests. Stay tuned for Q&A! Don...

Happy(ish?) New Year! We're back with a discussion on the 2025 Oscar Nominations and the groundbreaking Palestinian, Iranian, and Moroccan films that were nominated. The Palestinian and Tunisian The Voice of Hind Rajab , the Iranian and French It Was Just an Accident , and the Moroccan and Spanish Sirat each received a nomination for Best International Feature, while writer-director of It Was Just...

What will one sacrifice for a greater cause? How do we fight overwhelming systems of oppression? Does working within a corrupt system work, or do we need to tear it all down? Wicked: For Good explores these questions in great depth, with stunning performances from Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Marissa Bode, Michelle Yeoh, and more. We review the film, decipher what it has to say a...

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This is a reverberating ethos through Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir's latest film, Palestine 36 , which chronicles the last days of the British Mandate of Palestine and its lasting ramifications. Produced by Philistine Films, BBC Film, BFI, Doha Film Institute, Watermelon Pictures and more, and starring Hiam Abbass , Yasmine Al Massri , S...

The Simpsons, South Park , Family Guy, American Dad , and more all-American animated adult tv comedies have graced our screens for decades, mercilessly interrogating the all-American life and if it's all it's cracked up to be. But rarely do we get one of these series from an Arab and Muslim perspective, until now with Ramy Youssef and Pam Brady's #1 Happy Family USA , featuring the Egyptian-Americ...

In Heiny Srour's 1984 film L eila and the Wolves , Leila and her husband live in London, and are making an exhibit on popular movements in Lebanon and Palestine. However, her husband has conveniently forgotten to include women in these movements. We then follow Leila traversing through history, learning the intricacies of the lives of these various women, and what drove them to resist for their pe...

Mo Season 2 comes three years after its first, and so much has changed for Palestine in the real world. Yet Mo Amer and his team keep Season 2 directly after the first, honing in on Mo Najjar's personal journey that so reflects Mo Amer's own family refugee story in Texas. Our friends Tariq Ra'ouf and Kate Sánchez of But Why Tho? join us to discuss Season 2, how well it does at portraying Texas and...

As the genocide in Gaza tragically continues, so does Palestinian resilience and resistance, including and especially in artistry and cinema. Now set to release nationwide in theaters January 3rd, via Watermelon Pictures , with legendary director Michael Moore as its executive producer , From Ground Zero , a compilation of 22 documentaries from Gaza and directed by  Rashid Masharawi , is making mo...

Jaylee Hamidi (they/she) has made significant history in their supporting role on Nathasha Rothwell's Hulu series How to Die Alone as "Allie." A queer, Kurdish-Iranian-Chinese actor, Hamidi has made history as one of the first major Kurdish actors in a major network show, getting to showcase some of her culture and providing groundbreaking representation for Kurds and Iranians who rarely see thems...

The Rings of Power Season 2 has concluded, and we have back on our friend Arezou to go through all the details of the riveting sophomore outing of this take on J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium. But on that note, just how canonically faithful is the series, or does it take too many deviations from the source material? Either way, we discuss and praise the performances, particularly Black Iranian icon S...

Leslye Headland's The Acolyte, streaming on Disney+, is unique in more ways than one. As one of the most diverse Star Wars series, in front of and behind the scenes, with writers like the SWANA and Turkish Kor Adana , it presents a bold story in the era of The High Republic, showcasing the mistakes made by those in power and the reverberations for our main characters. Namely, twins Osha and Mae (...

Our favorite costume designer Isa joins us once again to review one of our all-time favorite series, Nida Manzoor 's We Are Lady Parts , starring a British Muslim women punk band comprising of frontwoman Saira ( Sarah Kameela Impey ), lead guitarist Amina ( Anjana Vasan ), bassist Bisma ( Faith Omole ), drummer Ayesha ( Juliette Motamed ), and band manager Momtaz ( Lucie Shorthouse ). After findin...

In her debut novel, The Jinn Daughter , Syrian-American author Rania Hanna weaves together a family tale based in stories of oral tradition across the Arab world. In telling stories with the Jinn, she seeks to tell a fundamentally human story. We discuss Rania's foray into the book world, how she aimed to tell stories on her own terms, and what she hopes to achieve with her novels. We also discuss...

Joined by our friends Darya Bajestani, Roxana Hadadi, Ali Nasser, and Zaina Ujayli (while sadly missing Mae!), we're live at D.C.'s premier comic-con, Awesome Con ! In this panel of SWANA writers, scholars, artists, and actors, we will discuss how we grew up feeling or not feeling represented, how Hollywood has constantly Orientalized our peoples, excluded us, and appropriated our cultures, where...

Roxana Hadadi joins us once again to review the Dune franchise, now with Dune: Part Two in theaters. In a franchise that appropriates so much from SWANA and Muslim cultures, does the second installment improve on that regard, or does it continue to appropriate and Orientalize? But even beyond that, does Denis Villeneuve effectively convey the meaning of Frank Herbert's original text, and its warni...

We welcome back our friends Jasmin and Isa to discuss Assassin's Creed Mirage , a sprawling action-adventure game from Ubisoft set in 9th Century Abbasid Baghdad, that tells the story of Basim Ibn Ishaq ( Lee Majdoub ) and his mentor Roshan ( Shohreh Aghdashloo ). We go into detail on why this game is the the best Iraqi, Arab, Persian, Muslim, and SWANA representation we've ever seen in gaming, an...

On the eve of Yalda, the Iranian Winter-Solstice, we review writer-director Maryam Keshavarz' s The Persian Version with our friends Arezou and Samira. How well does Keshavarz do at portraying a unique yet universal experience through Leila ( Layla Mohammadi ) and her mother Shireen ( Niousha Noor )? How does intergenerational trauma shape our familial relationships, and what can we do for healing...

We welcome back Palestinian-American Harvey award winning comic and video games writer, Nadia Shammas, to discuss their critically acclaimed graphic novel Squire , which takes place in an a SWANA/MENA fantasy setting, through the lens of Palestine in the midst of the IDF's ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza . We discuss Nadia's upbringing in both Palestine and the US, how the current crisis...

The Marvels is here, bringing our favorite superhero Kamala Khan ( Iman Vellani ), AKA Ms. Marvel, into the cinematic spotlight! But how well does it do her journey as a character, and how do the other leads of Carol ( Brie Larson ) and Monica ( Teyonah Parris ) fare? Our friends Isa and Maryam join us once again on the podcast to review the film, analyzing what how it did and didn't do things wel...

In the midst of Israel's ongoing bombardment and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza , with currently over 9,000 dead and over 30,000 more more injured, under the pretense of taking out Hamas leadership since their attack on Israel on October 7th , we have on Palestinian-American kidlit author and activist Hannah Moushabeck to discuss the ongoing crisis and her career. Hannah is the author of Homelan...

Before anything else, we would like listeners to know we have an episode on Palestine coming soon. In the meantime we're sharing donation links as we have done before. As writer-director Maryam Keshavarz's  The Persian Version has finally made its way to wide release in US theaters, we sit down with Keshavarz to discuss her semi-autobiographical dramedy film. Indeed it is the "Persian Version" of...

It's a week of heavy and tragic news across the SWANA region, from a 6.8 earthquake in Morocco, devastating floods in Libya, another Armenian genocide underway in Artsakh, and the commemoration of Jina Amini's murder and its sparking of the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement in Iran and Kurdistan and the diasporas. We discuss all of these topics and what you can do to help, and follow it up with a re...