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The Grand Marriage (2013)

★ — The Grand Marriage (2013)

Faisal Alotaibi is a Qatari documentary filmmaker who made this short film under the Al Jazeera documentary banner, which has long been one of the few reliable backers for non-fiction work focused on the Arab world and its cultural peripheries. The Comoros, an archipelago off the east coast of Africa with a predominantly Muslim population, is among the least-documented nations on film, and productions of any kind originating from there remain exceptionally rare. The grand marriage (ada in Comorian tradition) is a ceremonial institution rooted in centuries of Swahili and Islamic culture, and the practice carries such social weight on the islands that opting out of it, regardless of personal wealth or position, is essentially unthinkable.

A-Z World Movie Tour Comoros Simply put... this is a wealthy Muslim man who is planning an extravagant wedding to his second wife in one of the poorest countries on earth. I really did enjoy learning about Comoros culture and seeing the beauty of these islands, but it was a 47 minute long documentary where the bridegroom just basically gloats and self-congratulates the entire time. I really hope they bring out something better in the form of an actual movie soon.

Rating: ★ | Year: 2013 | Watched: 2025-06-06

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