More than simply a survey of film across the Arab region, Arab Cinema Travels offers a fascinating and expansive examination of Arab film culture in wider historical and geopolitical contexts. Centred on the movement of moving pictures, it explores the considerable impacts of travel and mobility on the nature of Arab cinema – from migration and expulsion, to pilgrimage and tourism.

Starting with the inventive traditions of Arabic travelogues, the text traces the manifold pathways that converge in the cinemas of Syria, Palestine and Dubai. Syrian production bursts out of long-held practices of studying abroad, this time in the film schools of the Eastern Bloc. Palestinian movies react to international assumptions about the Holy Land, informed by pilgrimage accounts – ironizing the supposed freedoms of the road movie. Dubai launches its fledgling industry off the back of centuries' worth of trade route management, logistics expertise and labour migration.

Contributing to the burgeoning field of transnational cinema studies, this compelling, buoyant and urgent text is essential reading for students of Film, Media Studies, Communication Studies, Arabic, Middle Eastern Studies and Tourism.