NEW YORK, April 15, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Seeking to counter the stereotyped portrayal of Arabs by Hollywood, directors from different Arab countries are featuring their films in the US to show Americans what the Arab world is all about.

"It's Arab voices coming out for the first time now as opposed to voices from the West on the Arab world," Bader Ben Hirsi, a British-Yemeni director whose film opened the Alwan Film Festival on Friday, April 14, told Reuters.

"Its Arab film makers saying 'This is our world," he added.

"It's very important that Americans of all backgrounds come and see the films, especially on the event of the fifth year after 9/11."

The April 14-23 film festival is featuring more than 30 movies from across the Arab world, Iran, Turkey, and South Asia.

The movies tackle timely subjects such as the US-led war in Iraq, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Afghanistan.

The festival was created by the Alwan for the Arts, a non-profit organization founded in 1998 in lower Manhattan.

Hirsi said his film, "A New Day in Old Sanaa," is a bittersweet romantic comedy tackling the story of a wealthy young man who is about to get married to a woman he has not met but who falls in love with another woman.

The Yemeni director hoped the festival would draw diverse audience among the American viewers.

The films are playing at just three lower Manhattan cinemas and the small festival has barely registered on the media radar of the city.

Highlights of the festival also includes the Iraqi film "Zaman: The Man from the Reeds" which tackles the story of a father's journey from the marshes where he lives to Baghdad to search for a medicine to cure his adopted son.

Another Iraqi film, "Ahlaam," is set in the days before and after the fall of Baghdad.

It is the story of a young girl locked up in a mental institute after her husband was arrested under Saddam Hussein.

She is freed when her hospital is destroyed by a bomb and she roams the streets amid the chaos of the fall of the city in April 2003.

A box office hit in Egypt, Saad Hendawi's "State of Love" is a post-9/11 love story looking at Arabs in the West.

Hiris said the festival was a bid to attract audience beyond their own borders.

"It's important to see what the Middle East really is. I watch TV here and it's completely different from the Middle East I know," he maintained.

"Everybody is frustrated seeing how Western media are depicting the Arab world."

Sherif Sadek, one of the festival's curators, said the ubiquity of American media and culture meant people in the Middle East understood more about America than vice versa.

"There seems to be a one-way street where Americans send information out but it's not receiving information, so hopefully this can provide a different point of view to the mistakes out there and the images being flashed on TV every day."