L. Mik-Meyer:The Arabic Initiative/CPH:DOX 13
Jakob Skovgaard Petersen, his wife and their two children were in Cairo for some years. Petersen was appointed Head of the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute and he was there during the cartoon crisis. A brilliant and knowledgeable man, not only a man with diplomatic skills and strong in dialogue but also a man, who was able oppose prominent religious and political leaders. The man is fine and is awarded when he gets home. The director decided to make a point out of this as the film starts and ends with Petersen being greeted by Her Majesty the Queen. That was a wrong decision, it is completely irrelevant for a film that could have focused much more on the dialogue and not on the family side of Petersen’s stay in Cairo. The wife plays tennis and feels insecure about the children in such a big city. They have parties, take Danish ministers around to meetings, and yes, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, no focus, superficial. There is, however, one very good scene in the film where Petersen sits in a soukh, drinks tea and discusses with some journalists from al-ahram. More of that could have made it interesting.
Denmark, 2008, 60 mins.
