Mohamed Kenawi – When Rumi Meets Francis #FDEO2017

September 22, 2017

PODCAST: Matt Micucci interviews Mohamed Kenawi, director of When Rumi Meets Francis, from the 5th Europe Orient Documentary Film Festival of Tangier.

Director Mohamed Kenawi talks to us about his film, When Rumi Meets Francis, presented in competition at the 5th Europe Orient Documentary Film Festival of Tangier in Morocco. The film follows Pejman Tadayon, an Iranian musician based in Italy, who works on a music concert inspired by the words, lives, heritage, and histories of Islam’s Sufi poet Jalalu-Din Rumi and the poet of Christianity St. Francis of Assisi.

Kenawi tells us that art provides the grounds for such a meeting, which tells a simple truth: before we are Muslims, or Christians, or of any other religion, we are human beings. He also tells us that Tadayon’s journey was also his own journey, not least of all because he is from Egypt and is also based in Italy; he too has experienced the same discomforts that plague Muslims after, for instance, the tragedy of terrorist attacks. In this interview, he also talks about how art provides the means for a cultural journey and cultural exchange and, among other things, how he dealt with the challenge of filming the fictional parts depicting an encounter between Rumi and Francis.

WHEN RUMI MEETS FRANCIS. It’s the story of Pejman Tadayon an Iranian musician based in Italy who draws his immediate strength, knowledge and his research for solutions to his problems through evoking historical personalities from the 13th century: Islam’s Sufi poet Jalalu-Din Rumi and the poet of Christianity St. Francis of Assisi… remembering their poems to write and compose music trying to let them meet in the same musical work.