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Your One-Stop Guide for Cairo Cinema Days 2

Zawya’s indie Arab film bash was every humble cinephile’s darling last year, and it looks like it’s going to be even better this time around.

Staff Writer

Few organisations can compare their love for cinema to that of the visionary folk behind Misr International Films and their prodigal offspring, Zawya. Yesteryear, they had the brilliant idea of hosting their newest cinematic celebration, Cairo Cinema Days, and it was quite the talk of the town. So thanks to popular demand, it’s back again this year.

The second round of Cairo Cinema Days will host a carefully curated collection of outstanding yet sadly obscure entries in the Arab film scene from all corners of the Middle East; Algeria, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Syra, Lebanon and our own little Egypt will take centre stage on the indie silver screens of Karim Cinema, Zamalek Cinema and Cimatheque, from the 23rd of April all the way to the 30th. Not only will you be indulging your eyes and ears, you can humour your inner filmmaker with a slew of workshops, Q&A sessions, discussions and masterclasses with directors, actors and cinematic creatives from around the Arab world

Would-be viewers and film fanatics can feast their eyes on 34 narrative films, short films, documentaries and more from around the Middle East, and we've taken the liberty of putting together all the info you'll possibly need for your future viewing pleasure.

Cimatheque - EGP 35/Ticket

 

A yearning in an unsettled space that, once, was shared and breathed by two cineastes, living in two different cities, trying to sustain their longing through each other’s scattered images, sounds, and monologues, pieced together in one film, one dialogue, one soul flown away by loneliness and fallen apart like a forsaken angel. As Far as Yearning is that dialogue-in-progress taking the shape of a film composed by sound, performed by words, perforated by images still in motion. Ghassan Salhab and Mohamed Soueid are embracing a sense of survival. This film is a sixth sense they nurtured in a world that has become faceless. Their film essay is a personal attempt to be two in one. Disguised as men, they walk among men who left behind their shadows.

Country: Lebanon, France
Year: 2017
Director: Mohamed Soueid, Ghassan Salhab
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 23 min
Language: Arabic, French
Subtitles: English

A small coastal town is in a state of excitement at the impending visit by the President. Inhabitants nervously peck and preen at their surroundings, scurrying around and cleaning frantically ahead of his arrival, to inspect a soap factory. But as the red-letter day draws closer, it grows ever more uncertain as to what will happen – or if indeed, will the President actually show up?

Country: Lebanon, USA, Qatar
Year: 2017
Director: Cyril Aris
Cast: Fouad Yammine, Nicolas Daniel
Genre: Comedy
Running Time: 19 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

 

Beirut, the day of the World Cup. A woman walks through the relatively quiet streets, people are indoors watching the game, or going about their domestic business. But there seems to be a disruption in the television signal, as isolated moments of mild chaos on the rooftops evidence. Then the still of the hot summer’s day is torn apart by an air attack, another interruption to be absorbed, another minor irritation Beirutis refuse to allow to quash their spirits.

Country: Lebanon, Germany, Spain, Qatar
Year: 2017
Director: Feyrouz Serhal
Cast: Petra Serhal
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 26 min
Language: Arabic

The film depicts the last days of eastern Aleppo’s siege. Just before its fall, Milad Amin, residing in Beirut, follows up with his friend Ghith, an activist and photographer, who like so many other civilians still remains in the besieged city. Following Ghith via his camera through the ruins of the city, we hear the two friends talk about people’s situations while waiting for their fate amidst the fighting parties. The film is an intimate and personal recording of civilians’ sufferings during this time of siege, hunger, and war – and a recording of both the relationship of activists brought together during the civil movements and of the geographic distances that separate them due to violence, bombing, and killing.

Country: Lebanon, Syria
Year: 2017
Director: Milad Amin
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 20 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

In Duo for Two Missing Persons, the filmmaker asks: could dance act as a conduit between life and death? The video traces the artist’s interest in mass graves and the grisly reality that, in such situations, bones must, by default, mix with each other, in a sort of macabre dance of disjointed bodies. To illustrate this, he mapped the number of possible combinations that two dismembered bodies could be reassembled into and sent it to a choreographer friend, asking him to use it as inspiration. The resulting choreography, which calls for painstakingly slow, continuous movement, manifests the stillness of death meeting the animation of life.The film draws on the artist’s background in theatre and performance, while illustrating the forensic-like method of investigation he shares with postwar Lebanese artists.

Country: Lebanon
Year: 2013
Director: Rabih Mroué
Running Time: 9 min
Language: English


The film uses notes written and filmed during summer 2006 as a personal account of the experience of war. The first part oscillates between day-shots and night-shots and features a soundtrack expressing the idea of time passing, awaiting, interrogations and fears experienced in such an unusual time. The second part is a journey to south Lebanon, a part which was devastated during the war. Nights and Days alternates between peaceful landscapes and ruins. The film questions the relationship between image and sound as it reflects on notions of 'beauty' and 'horror'.

Country: Lebanon, France
Year: 2007
Director: Lamia Joreige
Running Time: 17 min
Language: Arabic

Based on Skype conversations with Gaza-based photographers, fixers and drivers who were behind specific images that were transmitted from screen to screen in the summer of 2014. The film probes the face of mourning and grief- its digital embodiment, transmission, and representation. It asks how the gaze gets channeled within the digital realm, and how empathy travels. Equally, how the documentary signifier - and its abstraction - operate when viewing suffering from behind one's LCD screen. What exactly is viewing suffering ‘at a distance’? What is the behavior and political economy of the image of war? And who is the ‘local’ in the representation of war?


Country: Palestine, UK
Year: 2016
Director: Oraib Toukan
Running Time: 28 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English


In Now Eat My Script, Al Solh takes the transit of a sacrificed lamb in the trunk of her relative’s car as a starting point to reflect on the exchange of goods and food between her mother’s family in Syria and her family in Lebanon during times of conflict. The movement between families becomes a way of questioning the possibility of communicating trauma.

Country: Lebanon
Year: 2014
Director: Mounira Al Solh
Running Time: 25 min
Language: English

A visual tour around Jaffa, through rare archived footage, from the 1960s to the 1990s, captured on film in Israeli and American features. All the protagonists are edited out of the original footage; in the images of the extras and the people passing by, the Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari creates a visual memory record of a place that no longer exists, but from which he came from.


Country: Germany, Palestine
Year: 2015
Director: Kamal Aljafari
Running Time: 70 min
Language: Arabic

I hesitated for a long time. More than a step forward, more than one backwards, more than one by the side. Thousands of times the same gaze through the windows of my own end of the world”. These are the opening words of Chinese Ink. Indeed, there will be no rest along the way, but only meandering paths nourished with reminiscences. Salhab sketches out an inner world while the windows, as the only connection to the outside, become a frame and a mirror where faces are inscribed as they tend towards a landscape to live in. Thus, a movement unfolds between the inside and the outside, between the past and the present.

Country: Lebanon
Year: 2016
Director: Ghassan Salhab
Running Time: 55 min
Language: French, Arabic, German
Subtitles: English

 

Karim Cinema - EGP 35/Ticket

In order to confront the ghosts of his past, Palestinian director Raed Andoni assembles an eclectic group of ex-prisoners to build a replicate of Al-Moskobiya, Israel’s main interrogation centre, where he was himself jailed at age 18. From fragmentary memory, day after day, they give shape to the interrogation centre they all experienced, and re-enact its stories. As the walls of the cells rise, the tongues and the emotions loosen.


Country: France, Palestine, Switzerland, Qatar
Year: 2017
Director: Raed Andoni
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 94 min
Language: Arabic, English
Subtitles: English

During a student party, Mariam, a young Tunisian woman, meets the mysterious Youssef and leaves with him. A long night will begin, during which she’ll have to fight for her rights and her dignity. But how can justice be made when it lies on the side of the tormentors?

Country: Tunisia, France, Sweden, Norway, Lebanon, Qatar, Switzerland
Year: 2017
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Cast: Mariam Al Ferjani, Ghanem Zrelli, Noomane Hamda, Mohamed Akkari, Chedly Arfaoui, Anissa Daoud
Genre: Crime, Drama
Running Time: 100 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English


Bassem Yousri finds himself in the West Jutland area, in Denmark, on a research mission about the life of the peculiar Wardrobe Man; Kristian Vandet Jørgensen a hermit who lived in his wardrobe by the shore of Oddesund, Denmark, from 1917 until he died in 1956.
From inside his wardrobe in Cairo, Yousri tells the story of his research to his friend Shadi. The film combines documentary footage and archival material with fictional scenes. The lines between fact and fiction are blurred. In the Wardrobe Man, Yousri attempts to grasp the relationship between geography, reality, history, and imagination

Country: Egypt, Denmark
Year: 2018
Director: Bassem Yousri
Genre: Experimental Docu-fiction
Running Time: 50 min
Language: Danish, English, Arabic
Subtitles: Arabic, English

Algiers, a few years after the civil war. Amal and Samir have decided to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary in a restaurant. While on their way, they share their views on Algeria: Amal talks about lost illusions and Samir about the necessity to cope with them. At the same time, their son Fahim and his friends Feriel and Reda are wandering about in a hostile Algiers about to steal their youth.

Country: France, Belgium, Qatar
Year: 2017
Director: Sofia Djama
Cast: Sami Bouajila, Nadia Kaci
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 102 min
Language: French, Arabic
Subtitles: English

In Algiers, Bab el Oued, 16-year-old Habib decides to train a ram named “El Bouq” to become a sheep fight champion. Samir, 42, doesn’t have dreams anymore, other than surviving the hardships of his daily life by selling sheep and trying to make some money. As the Eid celebration approaches, Samir has the unique opportunity to maximize his profits, as the whole country will buy a sheep to be slaughtered. But for Habib, it’s another story. Will “El Bouq” become a champion? Or will he face a more tragic destiny?

Country: France, Qatar, Switzerland
Year: 2017
Director: Karim Sayad
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 78 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

Havin, the young wife of Kurdish shepherd Zagros, is being accused of adultery. She flees with their daughter Rayhan from Kurdistan to Brussels. Zagros is convinced of her innocence, leaves his family to start a new life, only to be plagued by doubts once he is there.


Country: Belgium
Year: 2017
Director: Sahim Omar Kalifa
Cast: Feyyaz Duman, Halima Ilter, Daria Hachem Mohamed, Brader Musiki
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 95 min
Language: Kurdish, Dutch
Subtitles: English

In a country that is suffocating inside a bubble of corruption and deterioration, Ossama follows stories of old buildings being demolished and historical landmarks disappearing. He encounters different characters recounting their connections to certain places in the city that are on the verge of vanishing. Some are quite nostalgic and take the matter as a sign of the city’s downfall, while others are more “practical”.

Country: Egypt
Year: 2017
Director: Ahmed Nabil
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 70 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

Marcel, a worker in a French shoe factory, lives a simple life between family, fishing and the local betting bar. When the factory unexpectedly relocates to Tunisia. Marcel finds himself unemployed and in search of a new job. Meanwhile, in Tunis, Foued starts working at the shoe factory to help out his ailing mother and woo the girl he fancies. The two men’s paths cross when it is least expected.

Country: Tunisia, France, Qatar
Year: 2017
Director: Walid Mattar
Cast: Philippe Rebbot, Kacey Mottet Klein, Corinne Masiero, Mohamed Amine Hamzaoui, Abir Bennani
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 91 min
Language: Arabic, French
Subtitles: English

A young Lebanese filmmaker who shares a Beirut apartment with his mother and pet dog attempts to reconstruct his identity by renovating his bedroom. But as the Syrian construction workers come and go in the freshly embattled household, new questions, old arguments and unexpected passions get stirred. Venturing further, the filmmaker contacts his estranged father to ask about the Argentinian passport he once had as a little boy. After years of separation, father and son embark on a journey to South America in search of family ties.


Country: Lebanon, USA
Year: 2017
Director: Anthony Chidiac
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 77 min
Language: Arabic, French, Spanish

In her directorial debut, Mary Jirmanus Saba deals with a forgotten revolution, saving from oblivion bloodily suppressed strikes at Lebanese tobacco and chocolate factories. These events from the 1970s, which held the promise of a popular revolution and, with it, of women’s emancipation were erased from collective memory by the country’s civil wars. Rich in archival footage from Lebanon’s militant cinema tradition, the film reconstructs the spirit of that revolt, asking of the past how we might transform the present.

Country: Lebanon
Year: 2017
Director: Mary Jirmanus Saba
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 99 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

The story of this film project revolves around one of the biggest production studios in the Arab world, and its lost archive. Located on Charles Helou Boulevard in the East of Beirut, the remains of Studio Baalbeck, a white modernist villa with open doors, broken windows and a garden full of wild plants and pine trees, appear like a lifeless place. But even if this biggest production studio in the Arab region initiated in 1962 had fallen victim to the Lebanese civil war (1975 to 1990), it has nevertheless left behind a treasure of an archive of voice recordings and films that still are famous throughout the entire Arab world, spanning productions from Erbil to Amman, and from Damascus to Cairo. Negligence by the Lebanese authorities has led to mold growing on parts of this archive inside the damp underground warehouses.

Country: Lebanon, Germany
Year: 2017
Director: Siska
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 48 min
Language: Arabic, French, English
Subtitles: English

Abdelkader is a security guard and Malika is a domestic employee. Recently married, they are madly in love; they dream of moving in together and of living their love to the full, despite the financial difficulties they face. One day, however, Abdelkader experiences a violent and humiliating incident that will turn the couple’s life upside-down.


Country: Morocco, France, Qatar
Year: 2017
Director: Faouzi Bensaïdi
Cast: Faouzi Bensaïdi, Nadia Kounda, Mouhcine Malzi
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 106 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

Surrounded by predators on the mean streets of Athens, a young refugee faces a heart-wrenching series of compromises if he hopes to survive another day. A gripping portrait of life in exile.

Country: Denmark, UK, Greece
Year: 2017
Director: Mahdi Fleifel
Casting: Atef Alshafei, Jalal Qaniry, Thymios Koukios, Rebih El-Saleous, Mounir Alkhateeb
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 15 min
Language: Arabic, Greek
Subtitles: English

The trials and tribulations faced by ordinary Palestinians attempting to travel a few hundred meters inside their own land are sadly, only too well known. This heartbreaking story articulates what happens with Shady and Maryam when trying to visit their sick grandfather, who lives on the other side of the separation barrier.


Country: Palestine
Year: 2017
Director: Ameen Nayfeh
Cast: Motaz Malhees, Yara Elham Jarrar, Nicolas Jarad, Ghantus Wael
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 11 mins
Language: Arabic, Hebrew

As goals fade and it becomes clear that no action really matters, meaning fades too. At that moment, desire fades, movement fades, and the body follows suit. Heaviness replaces lightness, the soul is fraught with anxiety, and the body wants to break free from this burden. The suspension of action, the fading of meaning, and the futile search for the source of such heaviness triggers anxiety that invades both my body and mind. It drives me to search for my tragedy but I do not find it, for it is not tangible. I cannot resist, cope with, or mourn a tragedy that I do not see. I search for it in memory, among clear and faded pictures, in Damascus and Beirut, in the shadows of my close friend Louay’s stories, between my prisons and his own. I finally find it in my body. But as soon as it is severed, I begin searching for it all over again.


Country: Lebanon, Syria
Year: 2017
Director: Maya Shurbaji
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 16 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

A Palestinian man languishing in an Israeli jail is pining for some quality time with his wife, in order to conceive. This presents a logistical conundrum, but one to which his spunky wife proves herself an ingenious equal.

Country: Palestine, Lebanon
Year: 2017
Director: Rakan Mayasi
Cast: Saleh Bakri, Rana Alamuddin
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 15 min
Language: Arabic, Hebrew
Subtitles: English

In Beirut, Syrian construction workers are building skyscrapers, while their own homes in their homeland are being shelled. These workers are confined to the site, forbidden as refugees, to leave before sunset, by decree of the Lebanese government. Cut off from their homeland, they gather at night around a small TV set for news about Syria, tormented by anguish and anxiety, while suffering the deprivation of the most basic human and workers’ rights.


Country: Germany, Lebanon, Syria, UAE, Qatar
Year: 2017
Director: Ziad Kalthoum
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 85 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

A tormented love letter to her home city, Rana Eid’s debut is a documentary, a paean to the city of Beirut and her father. The filmmaker’s voiceover is about both, equally a part of her and in need of resolution. Panoptic, as its name suggests, presents a number of perspectives on Beirut and especially focuses on the hidden corners, forgotten people and unknown stories that drift through this thought-provoking and poignant ode to memories lost.

Country: Lebanon, UAE
Year: 2017
Director: Rana Eid
Genre: Creative Documentary
Running Time: 69 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

Sarah and Salam are two strangers who meet at a train station. Each is about to take a trip but in very opposite directions. Sara wants to blow herself up using an explosive belt inside the station. Salam wants to rescue himself and everyone in the station - including Sarah. Profound and compelling, this is a powerful examination of the choice of life or death.

Country: Iraq, UK, France, Netherlands, Qatar
Year: 2017
Director: Mohamed Al Daradji
Cast: Ameer Jbara, Zahraa Ghandour, Huda Abd Alameer, Haidar Abd Alameer, Ali Al Khassaf, Iamen Laeibi
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 82 min
Language: Arabic, English
Subtitles: Arabic, English

In the midst of the chaos of Egypt’s Arab Spring, filmmaker Nada Riyadh falls in love with Ayman. The initial euphoria makes way for doubt, anxiety and blame – a metaphor for the disappointing trajectory of events in Egypt. When Ayman decides to leave the country because of the deteriorating social and political conditions, she does everything she can to convince him to stay. The escalating tension puts her own commitment to remain in the country to the test.

Country: Egypt
Year: 2016
Director: Ayman El Amir, Nada Riyadh
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 71 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

A father and his estranged son must come together to hand deliver his daughter's wedding invitations to each guest as per local Palestinian custom. As the estranged pair spend the day together, the tense details of their relationship come to a head, challenging their fragile and very different lives.

Country: Palestine, France, Germany, Colombia, Norway, Qatar, United Arab Emirates
Year: 2017
Director: Annemarie Jacir
Cast: Mohammad Bakri, Saleh Bakri, Maria Zreik
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Running Time: 97 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

With the help of El Homossany, one of the oldest assistant directors in Egypt, Zedan, a young indie filmmaker, is making a documentary about Motawe Eweis, who has worked as an extra in about 1000 films in the Egyptian Cinema from the forties till now. Zedan finds himself stuck between how he wants to make his documentary and how the two old friends view filmmaking in general. As an extra, Motawe is expecting the director to tell him what to say and how to play his role. As an assistant director, El Homossany finds ways to dramatize every situation and help his friend, Motawe, to get into character.

Country: Egypt
Year: 2017
Director: Mohamed Zedan
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 75 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English


Algeria today. Past and present collide in the lives of a newly wealthy property developer, a young woman torn between the path of reason and sentiment and an ambitious neurologist impeded by wartime wrongdoings. Three stories that plunge us into the human soul of a contemporary Arab society.

Country: France, Germany, Algeria, Qatar
Year: 2017
Director: Karim Moussaoui
Cast: Mohamed Djouhri, Hania Amar, Hassan Kachach
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 113 min
Language: Arabic, French
Subtitles: English

 

Zamalek Cinema - EGP 50/Ticket

Mitra is an ambitious artist in her forties who embarks on her dream project of making a film about the legendary Egyptian singer Oum Kulthum. Her film explores the struggles, sacrifices and the price of Oum Kulthum's success as a female artist in a male dominated society. However, having left her family behind for her career and in her efforts to capture the essence of Oum Kulthum as a myth, a woman and an artist, Mitra's own struggles blend with those of the singer.

Country: Germany, Austria, Italy, Lebanon, Qatar
Year: 2017
Director: Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari
Cast: Yasmin Raeis, Kais Nashif, Neda Rahmanian
Genre: Bio, Drama
Running Time: 90 min
Language: English, Arabic, Farsi
Subtitles: English, Arabic


During a student party, Mariam, a young Tunisian woman, meets the mysterious Youssef and leaves with him. A long night will begin, during which she’ll have to fight for her rights and her dignity. But how can justice be made when it lies on the side of the tormentors?

Country: Tunisia, France, Sweden, Norway, Lebanon, Qatar, Switzerland
Year: 2017
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Cast: Mariam Al Ferjani, Ghanem Zrelli, Noomane Hamda, Mohamed Akkari, Chedly Arfaoui, Anissa Daoud
Genre: Crime, Drama
Running Time: 100 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

Algiers, a few years after the civil war. Amal and Samir have decided to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary in a restaurant. While on their way, they share their views on Algeria: Amal talks about lost illusions and Samir about the necessity to cope with them. At the same time, their son Fahim and his friends Feriel and Reda are wandering about in a hostile Algiers about to steal their youth.

Country: France, Belgium, Qatar
Year: 2017
Director: Sofia Djama
Cast: Sami Bouajila, Nadia Kaci
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 102 min
Language: French, Arabic
Subtitles: English

Marcel, a worker in a French shoe factory, lives a simple life between family, fishing and the local betting bar. When the factory unexpectedly relocates to Tunisia. Marcel finds himself unemployed and in search of a new job. Meanwhile, in Tunis, Foued starts working at the shoe factory to help out his ailing mother and woo the girl he fancies. The two men’s paths cross when it is least expected.

Country: Tunisia, France, Qatar
Year: 2017
Director: Walid Mattar
Cast: Philippe Rebbot, Kacey Mottet Klein, Corinne Masiero, Mohamed Amine Hamzaoui, Abir Bennani
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 91 min
Language: Arabic, French
Subtitles: English

 

Havin, the young wife of Kurdish shepherd Zagros, is being accused of adultery. She flees with their daughter Rayhan from Kurdistan to Brussels. Zagros is convinced of her innocence, leaves his family to start a new life, only to be plagued by doubts once he is there.

Country: Belgium
Year: 2017
Director: Sahim Omar Kalifa
Cast: Feyyaz Duman, Halima Ilter, Daria Hachem Mohamed, Brader Musiki
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 95 min
Language: Kurdish, Dutch
Subtitles: English

 

Abdelkader is a security guard and Malika is a domestic employee. Recently married, they are madly in love; they dream of moving in together and of living their love to the full, despite the financial difficulties they face. One day, however, Abdelkader experiences a violent and humiliating incident that will turn the couple’s life upside-down.

Country: Morocco, France, Qatar
Year: 2017
Director: Faouzi Bensaïdi
Cast: Faouzi Bensaïdi, Nadia Kounda, Mouhcine Malzi
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 106 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

 

A father and his estranged son must come together to hand deliver his daughter's wedding invitations to each guest as per local Palestinian custom. As the estranged pair spend the day together, the tense details of their relationship come to a head, challenging their fragile and very different lives.

Country: Palestine, France, Germany, Colombia, Norway, Qatar, United Arab Emirates
Year: 2017
Director: Annemarie Jacir
Cast: Mohammad Bakri, Saleh Bakri, Maria Zreik
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Running Time: 97 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English

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