Filmmaker Statement

‘one like him’ is funded by the British Film Institute and was shot in Amman, Jordan in June 2021. We brought two Palestinian actors across the land border during the conflict with Israel, in the midst of the pandemic. Within this film is the first use of the term ‘mithli’, a new coinage by the Arabic speaking queer community. It means to love ‘one like him’. The film is a conversation between two men who have not seen each other in twenty years, not since a phone call which caused a huge rupture. It is based on the lived experience of the writer Tareq Baconi. At 17, he told his best friend he was in love with him. He never heard from that friend again. In the film, we imagine those men meeting again after 20 years. Karim, the cypher character for Tareq, tries to restart the conversation with his friend Ramzi. But each time the outcomes are stranger and stranger. Karim is searching for something. To find something in fiction which sometimes cannot be found in reality: closure.