"The media intervention programs and training initiatives for Arabs reflect hegemonies and dependencies. Taking into consideration the absence of a public cinema infrastructure in the Arab World and thus the lack of institutional representation or backing for film-makers leads one to question to what degree the director can control her/his story. Or in other words, to what extent the films, which are read as national works, can reflect debates or atmospheres in their country of origin at all? The decoding of films, not only from the Middle East, is in many cases national, as the case of Paradise Now showed. Critics’ reactions to Waltz with Bashir suggest that the reading of the film is connected to the actual political experience within the region versus political assumptions about it, a rather regional reading. An aspect entirely missing in the Western decoding process of films from the Middle East is the question who was involved in the encoding. The critics, who translate the film to the wider audience, focus on the films’ subjects or manipulations, rather than on the economic and institutional backing of the creation and thus interests behind it. After completing the film it is solely the director who has to defend the work as a statement from and about her/his country. Regardless of formal ownership and the involvement of co-producing states these films are marketed as documents from and about the country in which the story takes place. The majority of co-productions by directors from the Middle East, like the majority of films produced at all, get little attention. It is the films with international recognition, be it by box office numbers or debates that are remembered. One could easily assume that Paradise Now will become part of a Palestinian collective memory. Yet, without physical archives in the Arab countries, and Palestine not even being a state, how long will the co-produced movies be accessible as part of cultural heritage? In French and German archives the film rolls will be stored and made accessible, it is in Europe where Arabs will still have to look for their cultural memory in the distant future." (Conclusion, page 11-12)