About the film

Valentino’s Ghost. The Politics Behind Images illustrates the changing image of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media, mirrors America’s foreign policy agenda in the Middle East. In 1920s Hollywood, the Arab was a hero, as played by the iconic Rudolph Valentino in his hugely successful “Sheik” movies. By the 1970s, Arabs and Muslims were depicted solely as embodiments of evil, not only in Hollywood films, but in children’s cartoons, in the news media, on TV, and even on radio. What happened to the hero image? What social and political and religious forces shifted that image to a socially acceptable negative stereotype?

Selected festivals and awards: 2012 – Venice IFF, 2012 – MFF Amsterdam / IDFA