Unquestionably, Palestine took center stage this year. Those attending the festival and its many events never shied away from addressing the war and its toll on Palestinian civilians. But there were no protests or diplomatic incidents as have occurred in Europe.

Dimming the lights on the usual colorful red carpet, opening and closing ceremonies had a sober tone and guests followed a less flashy black, white and silver dress code. At the opening, veteran Egyptian actor Mahmoud Hemida addressed the audience with the words, “I am now supposed to ask you for a moment of silence, but I will not. Because mourning, as we express sadness, is an excuse for forgetting, and I do not want to forget, nor do I want you to forget.”

Instead of flamboyant TV-friendly entertainments, singers like Chilean star Elyanna and the popular Egyptian band Cairokee invoked the Palestinian experience in plaintive numbers. On the unconventional side, the festival chose to honor two veteran clapper loaders, Khairy Farag and Mohamed Al-Kilany, who have worked in Egyptian films since the 1970s. More conventional honorees included Egyptian director Marwan Hamed, who received a Career Achievement Award, and French actor Christopher Lambert.

Playing to a smaller crowd of press, professionals and audiences than in previous years, the festival unfolded with dignity, without lavish festivities, and with a few new parts. Under the management of festival director Intishal Al-Timimi and first-time artistic director Marianne Khoury, there was a beefed-up industry focus which found an elegant open-air home at the Plaza, El Gouna’s most famous piece of modern architecture. Falling under the umbrella of CineGouna were the project market CineGouna SpringBoard; an array of local, regional and international professionals connecting at CineGouna Bridge; plus the launch of CineGouna Market to showcase film line-ups, projects and services and CineGouna Emerge to offer support to students and debuting filmmakers.

Screenings were a mixed bag, running from mighty festival hits like Anatomy of a Fall and Dogman (both in competition, neither prized) to a handful of modest but well-liked regional works that included the emotion-packed documentary-musical From Abdul to Leila by French-Iraqi director Leila Albayaty; the Iraq-Kurdistan Transient Happiness, a bittersweet slice of life involving an elderly woman’s relationship with her husband, directed by Sina Muhammed; and Mohamed Kordofani’s touching and paradoxical Sudanese tale of two women that bowed in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, Goodbye, Julia. Worthy of note was Mohammed Latrèche’s delightful bio-documentary Zinet, Algiers, Happiness that rediscovered a forgotten Algerian filmmaker from the Seventies, screened in tandem with Zinet’s offbeat directing effort set in the Algiers’ Casbah, Tahia Ya Didou, which has recently been restored.

The program also found room for German documaker Steffi Niederzoll’s aching Seven Winters in Tehran, which reconstructs the arrest of Reyhaneh Jabbari, a 19-year-old Iranian woman convicted of murdering a man who attempted to rape her, and her seven years awaiting execution while her family frantically worked to save her. Ibrahim Nash’at’s documentary Hollywoodgate, an account of how the director embedded himself for a year at a Taliban air force base, offers a unique behind-the-scenes view and won El Gouna’s best documentary award as well as the Fipresci prize.

One could only be impressed by the festival’s on-the-fly addition of a Window on Palestinian Cinema section which richly supplemented the many public expressions of distress over the ongoing war. Put together in just two months, the section demonstrated the value of cinema as a psychological and informational tool able to portray the background to the war and stimulate discussion. Films like The Teacher, a debut by British-Palestinian director Farah Nabulsi set in the West Bank amid Israel bulldozers, armed settlers and an Israeli soldier held hostage, showed how extraordinarily relevant films can be to current reality.

Beyond the Middle East, the competition program proved eclectic enough to open a door on experimental oddities like Lubdhak Chatterjee’s debut feature Whispers of Fire & Water, the tale of an Indian audio installation artist who, in the course of collecting sounds in a coal mining region, bears witness to the plundering of the environment while, on another level, he reaches for a spiritual experience in nature.

As part of her goals as artistic director, Khoury also aimed to widen audiences for the festival’s films beyond El Gouna. Cairo’s Zawya theater, one of the country’s most important arthouse cinemas, screened a week-long program for filmgoers in the busy capital, where a presidential election was just held. Outside the venue, remnants of the election posters of incumbent president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi are still hanging.

The president will start his third term amid many challenges, with freedom of expression and organized labor among them. One month before the Gaza war began, Egypt’s film and TV unions and labor organizations began to protest against controlled compensation, lack of representation, long working hours, and the monopoly of certain state-affiliated production companies such as the media conglomerate United Media Services. The movement has cooled down due to the war; nevertheless, the Egyptian film and TV industry is very likely in for a major challenge in the next few years.

While Palestine was an open topic in El Gouna, international festivals are left to figure out how they will approach the conflict. Notably, Amsterdam’s documentary festival IDFA witnessed a controversy after pro-Palestine protesters demonstrated on stage during the opening ceremony, and upcoming festivals such as Rotterdam’s IFFR and the Berlinale could be in for a similar challenge to guarantee participants’ rights to free speech while dealing with the policy of their governments.

Over the years, IFFR has offered dedicated programmes focusing on the Palestinian cause, and has supported Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers who are for coexistence and critical of the occupation. In the past weeks in Germany, several Palestinian cultural activities have been canceled by governmental institutions. It will be interesting to see how the Berlinale, which received €12.9 million in institutional funding last year from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, manages to juggle polarizing opinions on the two sides.

EL GOUNA SILVER STAR FOR NARRATIVE FILM
A GREYHOUND OF A GIRL
directed by Enzo D’Alò
Italy

EL GOUNA BRONZE STAR FOR NARRATIVE FILM was awarded to
A STRANGE PATH
directed by Guto Parente from Brazil

EL GOUNA STAR FOR BEST ARAB NARRATIVE FILM
TRANSIENT HAPPINESS
directed by Sina Muhammed
Iraq

EL GOUNA STAR FOR BEST ACTRESS
Parwin Rajabi in TRANSIENT HAPPINESS
directed by Sina Muhammed
Iraq

EL GOUNA STAR FOR BEST ACTOR
Bottsooj Uortaikh in IF ONLY I COULD HIBERNATE
directed by Zoljargal Purevdash
Mongolia

THE CINEMA FOR HUMANITY AUDIENCE AWARD
GOODBYE JULIA (WADA’N JULIA)
directed by Mohamed Kordofani
Sudan

EL GOUNA GOLD STAR FOR DOCUMENTARY FILM
HOLLYWOODGATE
directed by Ibrahim Nash’at.

EL GOUNA SILVER STAR FOR DOCUMENTARY FILM.
ex-aequo to:
NON-ALIGNED: SCENES FROM THE LABUDOVIC REELS
directed by Mila Turajlic
Serbia
&
SEVEN WINTERS IN TEHRAN
directed by Steffi Niederzoll
Germany

EL GOUNA BRONZE STAR FOR DOCUMENTARY FILM
ON THE ADAMANT
directed by Nicolas Philibert
France

EL GOUNA STAR FOR BEST ARAB DOCUMENTARY FILM
MACHTAT
directed by Sonia Ben Slama
Tunisia

THE EL GOUNA GREEN STAR AWARD
THE BURITI FLOWER
directed by João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora
Brazil

EL GOUNA GOLDEN STAR FOR SHORT FILM
CROSS MY HEART AND HOPE TO DIE
directed by Sam Manacsa
Philippines

EL GOUNA SILVER STAR FOR SHORT FILMS
THE RED SEA MAKES ME WANNA CRY
directed by Faris Alrjoob
Jordan

EL GOUNA BRONZE STAR FOR SHORT FILM
AT LAST, THE DAY
directed by Carolina Vergara
Argentina

EL GOUNA STAR FOR BEST ARAB SHORT
LES CHENILLES
directed by Michelle & Noel Keserwany
Lebanon (France)

FIPRESCI PRIZE
HOLLYWOODGATE
directed by Ibrahim Nash’at
Germany

Yousra recalled the informality with which, as a young girl, she was selected to act in An Egyptian Story by the late, great director Youssef Chahine. He came to her home early one morning to give her the news and proceeded to select costumes for her character, Amal, from her closet. Marianne Khoury and her brother Gabriel were the producers of two subsequent Yousra-Chahine collaborations, Alexandria: Again and Forever and The Emigrant.

Yousra, who is the Goodwill Ambassador for UNAIDS for the MENA region, is an influential voice in the Middle East and North Africa.  She underlined the El Gouna festival’s dedication to the Palestinian people — the theme of this year’s Special Edition — and the stance it has taken against the ongoing war in Gaza. In her remarks on the festival’s opening night, she referred to the Palestinians as “a noble and glorious people who taught the whole world the supreme meaning of humanity, the great and resilient Palestine.”

The masterclass took place in the context of El Gouna’s industry section CineGouna Bridge.

LET US PLAY YESTERDAY
Menna Ekram, with previous experience in commercial TV series and shorts, takes an Egyptian Catholic school as the location for Let Us Play Yesterday. Sarah, a 14-year-old student played by Fairouz Saad, trembles during rehearsals for a Mother’s Day performance in her school, while being coached by a strict nun. Sister Noura, played by award-winning Egyptian dancer and choreographer Karima Mansour, takes Sarah to her private residence to adjust her long dress, opening up a new connection between the two characters, where the wall between the strict teacher and the shy student breaks down and female solidarity emerges. The contrast between the student’s flowery pink dress and the nun’s black habit is highlighted by director of photography Ahmed Jalboush. Yomna Khattab’s screenplay touches on oppressed body freedom and stereotyped standards of beauty, not only from the student’s perspective but also from the nun’s. It is a rare topic in Egyptian cinema, which gives Let Us Play Yesterday extra points. 

OBJECTS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR
In Objects Are Closer Than They Appear, Ahmed Sobhy masterfully tells a short story about a young man, Nae’em, who is trying to pay back some money he owes his girlfriend. Sobhy takes the camera into the typical middle-class flat of an Egyptian family where Nae’em visits his married sister, whose life unfolds amid debt, two kids, and exhaustion. She has to endure the abuse and frustration of not only her brother but also her mistrustful and possibly abusive husband (Mahmoud Elwekil).

Despite having little dialogue, Elwekil gives a calm performance that puts the marriage in context. With impressive body language and facial impressions, Mona Ragab is brilliant as a housewife stuck between her husband’s patriarchal net and her family’s apathy. Despite her ill treatment, she continues to make ends meet. Sobhy, who plays the main character Nae’em, takes on a fragile masculinity that feeds on others’ kindness, especially women’s. In one tense shot lasting 16 minutes with no cuts, cinematographer Mostafa Sheshtawy realistically captures a future miserable family. It is such a pleasure to see Egyptian filmmakers embrace this kind of realism in their stories, not dumbing it down for a wider audiences, but using it to create a captivating thriller.

60 EGYPTIAN POUNDS
60 Egyptian Pounds, Amr Salama’s latest project, opened the El Gouna Film Festival. Here the award-winning Egyptian filmmaker of Sheikh Jackson takes another risk in a visually impressive slow-burn short thriller. The story starts at a boiling point in the life of an impoverished family in rural Egypt, one plagued by domestic violence. Teenage Ziad takes matters into his own hands to defend his mother and physically impaired younger brother. Living in dire poverty, the family tries to move on with their daily lives and live normally, eating, studying, sleeping. Then an unwanted visitor knocks on the door. 

The visuals in Salama’s short are grim and the violence is excruciating. Although part of the film takes place in the daytime, Ahmed Bayoumi Fouad’s camera stays indoors, echoing the characters’ fear and how each of them is trying to process trauma. Despite being forced to grow up early to protect his family from his abusive dad, Ziad (played by rapper Ziad Zaza) is still a teenager, writing rap lyrics in school textbooks and drawing on the bathroom mirror. In a dreamlike sequence, he practices his melancholic lyrics about being raised in violence, at a school where the fee is 60 Egyptian pounds. Rap and Trap are growing underground music genres in Egypt, giving voice to disenfranchised youth nationwide as they put their nightmares, dreams, and frustrations on the Internet. While some songs eventually get commercialised in product ads, Salama has managed to dig a story out of one and put it to artistic use.

Kerr opens Family Portrait with a quote from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Conqueror Worm: “through a circle that ever returneth in / To the self-same spot”. One of Poe’s personal favourites, the poem is a lurid depiction of humans as lowly creatures condemned to confused, futile, repetitive lives and inevitable, grisly deaths. Quite how this relates to the characters on screen is unclear, but there is certainly plenty of confusion in this enigmatic drama, as well as an unseen but grim-sounding off-screen death.

Kerr shot Family Portrait in and around her grandparents’ handsome rural home in Kerrville, Texas, which may indicate autobiographical intent, or financial necessity, or both. As a multi-generational gathering draws to its end, Katy (Deragh Campbell) and her mother Barbara (Silvana Jakich) are struggling to corral all the extended family members for a Christmas card photo. Outwardly, everyone seems willing to make the shot happen, and yet they are all distracted by random conversational tangents, minor domestic issues, and shock news of a distant relative’s suddenly death from a mysterious illness, possibly an opaque reference to the early days of Covid.

Observed in series of snapshot vignettes, the family members are absorbed by a comically random range of topics: how Americans mistake the Polish accent for Russian, alien invasion, revision for a high school chemisty test, online video surveillance of a college coffee machine, and more. These scattered exchanges feel highly naturalistic, more like eavesdopping on real conversations than scripted dialogue. They are disconnected fragments, but loosely linked by their recurring sense of paranoid unease and distrust of official narratives.

In one key scene, Katy’s showboating father (Robert Salas) shares a much-told family anecdote about photo of a relative who fought in World War II being manipulated and presented as a fake Vietnam war shot. Another discussion touches on John Carpenter’s They Live (1988), a darkly satirical cult sci-fi classic that reveals the dystopian fascist horrorscape lurking below the surface of blandly confirmist consumer society. Kerr keeps these tiny thematic hints elusive and allusive, but they may be intended to subtly echo her subtly implied message that taking a perfect objective portrait is impossible.

As Katy becomes increasingly obsessive about securing the photo, Barbara mysteriously disappears. This is the closest thing to a plot twist in Family Portrait, shifting the narrative mode into an thriller of sorts, but a thriller which owes more to the existential ellipses of Michelangelo Antonioni or the elusive allegories of Apichatpong Weerasethakul than to Hollywood suspense conventions. Indeed, Kerr cites Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady (2005) as an influence on the film’s bifurcated narrative, which climaxes with a suspensful detour into the woods and a dreamlike, beautifully filmed underwater sequence.

Kerr and her cinematographer Lidia Nikonova shoot Family Portrait with great poise and precision, making elegant use of slow zooms, extended Steadicam glides and artfully framed still-life tableaux. She also uses nature as a constant and unsettling background presence, intercutting the human scenes with deserted riverside vistas and intense close-ups of vivid orange caterpillars rolling through lush garden foliage. Sound design is deployed to quietly powerful effect too, with mysterious drones blanking out human voices at times, and the subtle hiss of wind-rustled trees amplified to almost deafening volume. There is great style and technique at play here, very impressive for a debut feature. Hopefully Kerr can apply these experimental methods to more substantial narratives in future, because she clearly has plenty to say, even if she is still figuring out the best way to express herself.

Director, screenwriter: Lucy Kerr
Cast: Deragh Campbell, Chris Galust, Rachel Alig, Katie Folger, Robert Salas, Silvana Jakich
Cinematography: Lidia Nikonova
Editing: Karlis Bergs
Sound: Nikolay Antonov, Andrew Siedenburg
Producer: Megan Pickrell, Frederic Winkler
Production companies: Insufficient Funds (US), Conjuring Productions (US)
World Sales: Lights On Films
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival (Official Selection, out of Competition)
In English
75 minutes

Screening in the main dramatic competition at El Gouna film festival this week, The Wall is Van Leeuw’s latest outsider snapshot of global conflict zones, having already revisited the Rwandan genocide in The Day God Walked Away (2009) and the Syrian civil war in his multiple prize-winner Insyriated, aka In Syria (2017). For his third feature, the Belgian cinematographer turned writer-director trains an outraged eye on the deep-rooted racism of white America, but he brings little new or insightful to this very well-travelled dramatic terrain. Star billing for Krieps will help snag festival interest and curious audiences, but her modest art-house marquee power cannot magically elevate this underpowered stab at scathing social critique.

Van Leeuw says he intended The Wall to depict the forces of evil in close-up detail, instead of leaving them as shadowy background figures as in his previous films. The locus of malice here is Arizona border patrol officer Jessica Comely (Krieps), a living embodiment of Donald Trump’s poisonous populist rhetoric about illegal migrants flooding north over the Mexican border. The star of Phantom Thread (2017) and Corsage (2022) gives a typically compelling performance, seething with repressed rage and knife-edge intensity, but her skills are mostly wasted in this worthy treatment of over-familiar themes.

Van Leeuw depicts Comely as a loose-cannon loner with deep scars and anger management issues. She has prickly relationships with her family, for historical reasons that the film never explains, while her sister-in-law and best friend Sally (Marla Robison) is dying of cancer. Her bleak sex life seems to entail clandestinely picking up undocumented Mexican immigrants and paying them for joyless erotic encounters at gunpoint, a psychologically intriguing subplot that deserves far more screen time and narrative interrogation than it gets here.

Comely’s obsessive war on migrants includes sadistically emptying water bottles left in the desert to help them survive risky illegal crossings. She and her colleagues call their targets “toncs”, a slang term apparently derived from the acronym Temporarily Outside Native Country, but they use it more like a dehumanising racial slur. One day she goes too far, fatally shooting an already injured Mexican in a trigger-happy showdown that falls somewhere between tragic mistake and cold-blooded murder. The killing brings her into conflict with her bosses and with Jose Edwards (Mike Wilson), a kindly elder of the Native American Tohono O’odham nation, whose territory has straddled Arizona and Mexico for centuries, long before white settlers imposed an artificial border. A legal investigation follows but, inevitably, the scales of justice are not equally weighted in this modern-day Cowboys-vs-Indians saga.

Shot with a dusty, sun-bleached, understated indie-movie look, The Wall is more of a one woman show than a fully flesh-out ensemble drama. The only star name in a mostly unknown cast, Krieps is undoubtedly a casting coup for Van Leeuw. With her severely scraped back hair, zero make-up and Elvis-curled lip sneer, the Luxemboug native’s striking physical transformation into a perma-scowling androgynous warrior queen is impressive. Even so, whatever her acting prowess, Krieps is still an inescapably bizarre choice for such a butch, ball-breaking, gun-toting character. Speaking at his first El Gouna festival screening, Van Leeuw revealed the star was cast as a condition of the film’s Luxembourgish funding, which makes more financial than creative sense.

Also, despite intensive accent coaching, Krieps cannot entirely hide her natural Euro-inflected pronunciation. If Van Leeuw had made Comely a recent immigrant herself, these transatlantic slippages might have been more dramatically plausible, and lent her racist outlook extra ironic bite. But no, the simplistic screenplay presents her as American born and bred, repeatedly bashing us over the head with her God-fearing nativist pride. There is rich potential for a complex study in evil here, but too little depth, context or nuance. However well-intentioned, The Wall only shows us a monster, not the forces that made her so monstrous.

Director, screenwriter: Philippe Van Leeuw
Cast: Vicky Krieps, Mike Wilson, Ezeikel Velasco, Haydn Winston, Marla Robison, Steve Anderson, Brendan Guy Murphy
Cinematography: Joachim Philippe
Editing: Gladys Joujou
Producer: Guillaume Malandrin
Production company: Altitude 100 Production (Belgium)
World sales: Indie Sales, France
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival (Feature Narrative Competition)
In English, Spanish
96 minutes

This trip back in time to the city of Algiers in the 1970s, with its steep narrow lanes climbing the hillside of the Casbah and children playing noisily in the streets, is set against a background of political unrest that culminated in Algerians fighting French colonialism to obtain their independence as a country. When young Zinet is hired as an assistant and crowd handler on Gillo Pontecorvo’s militantly pro-Algerian classic The Battle of Algiers, which is illustrated by a few exciting moments of a huge angry crowd filling a square, Zinet’s trajectory suddenly clicks for a Western viewer.

Latrèche, who lives in Paris, returned to Algiers in late 2019 to research Zinet’s sole work as a director, Tahia Ya Didou. The one-hour Zinet, Algiers, Happiness, made as Covid took hold of Algeria and health restrictions emptied the streets of the bustling city, is a moving record of this cult and cultural artefact that vanished without a trace for decades, until it was found in the cellar of a film archive.

Noting with sorrow how much the heart of Algiers, the Casbah, has changed since Zinet shot there in 1970, Latrèche remembers the earlier film, which he saw as a child, as a revelation: “I had never perceived my country like this.” He excerpts many of the film’s best scenes in his documentary. Zinet’s vision appears mildly comic and touching in a Chalinesque way, with a bad cop chasing naughty children down a seemingly infinite series of staircases in fast motion, and the emblematic character Momo of the Casbah grinning like a genie from the city’s boardwalks. When he disappears with a camera trick, a little boy with curly red hair, Redouane, appears in his place.

Latrèche spends several scenes in the doc hunting down Redouane: he wants to publicly screen the restored print of Tahia Ya Didou on a big wall in the Casbah, and has made up his mind that it must be Redouane who introduces the film to the audience. But when he finally finds him, now a somber man in his 50s, he is unwilling to even talk about the film – at least until much later, when his bittersweet memories of Zinet, who was his uncle, come flooding out.

Other characters who appear almost casually and, in Nico Peltier and Philippe Ramos’s succinct editing, never outstay their welcome on screen, bring insights into the impact Tahia Ya Didou had on local audiences. The acclaimed archivist Boudjamaa Karéche, who ran the Algerien Cinematheque for thirty years, appears in an older version. Despite having lost his sight, he still passionately talks about the film and its maker, describing how Zinet avoided all the “traps” involved in filmmaking, like financing and writing a script. Shooting on the budget of a tourist documentary commissioned by the mayor, he created a wickedly surreal story set in the Casbah which the authorities never saw fit to release theatrically. It did appear on TV, however, and seems to have become a favorite with Algerian families.

Zinet, who had fought in the war for independence with the National Liberation Front and been wounded, briefly studied theater in East Germany. After the disappointment of Tahia‘s non-release, he moved to Paris and became known as “the Arab in French movies”. In an excerpt from Yves Boisset’s 1975 The Common Man, we see him firing a shotgun at a French tourist in a café: he has recognized the man who tortured him during the war. Sadly, Zinet himself met a tragic end, being confined to a French psychiatric hospital until his death in 1995.

Director, narrator: Mohammed Latrèche
Screenplay: Sid Ahmed, Mohammed Latrèche
Producers: Sabine Jaffrennou, Mohammed Latrèche, Jean-Francois Le Corre, Boualem Ziani
Cinematography: Yanis Kheloufi, Oussama Zouaoui, Yann Seweryn
Editing: Nico Peltier, Philippe Ramos
Sound: Joel Flescher, Abd El-Aziz Latrèche
Production companies: Sb Films, Vivement Lundi
World Sales: Vivement Lundi  
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival (Feature Documentary competition)
In French, Arabic
57 minutes

Curated by El Gouna Film Festival, the Window on Palestine film programme tells us there is more to Palestine than these devastating images documenting the obliteration of the city of Gaza. Ten films are being screened, all produced after the 2000 Second Intifada, documenting and reflecting on the reality of Palestinian life. The programme is curated in association with the Palestine Cinema Days festival, which showcases some 60 films in seven cities in Palestine, and spotlights Palestinian films and stories from around the world. First launched in 2014, it is the only festival of local films that takes place in Palestine.

Palestinian are like any oppressed people in history, but in these films, directors take charge of the narrative of their people and their struggle. They are not just militants, mourning mothers, bombing victims, traumatized doctors, or defiant war reporters. They are more than just numbers in the growing death toll. They are also frustrated lovers, daughters, grandmothers, playful children, caring teachers, and so many more.

Three films in the programme tackle the shock of war itself, a crucial part of living in an occupied territory. The short documentary Ambulance (2016) shows the danger and devastation medical workers in Gaza face through the eyes of young filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly. The fear and caution on their faces is visible, but there is no time to sit down and reflect. The same thing happens in Sina Salimi’s short feature Roof Knocking (2017), which captures what a family of three does after they receive a call from the Israeli military informing them that their house will be shelled. Mohammed Almughanni’s Shujayya (2015) attempts to capture the aftermath of a conflict by following one of the many families stripped of their possessions by the 2014 war. The film gives the audience time for reflection and a chance to understand that war is not just the loss of a house, a car, a shop, or even loved ones, but also losing a sense of mental stability.

Abdelsalam Shehadeh’s To My Father (2008), Anne Paq and Dror Dayan’s Not Just Your Picture (2019), and Lina Soualem’s Bye Bye Tiberias (2023) all embark on a journey to connect the dots on the history of their families through going back to the archives, family pictures and footage, and legal documents. Whether it is in Rafah, Tiberias, or Gaza, complex as each city is, all are trying to use archival footage to allow the characters to exist in places where they are not. Soualem’s family is no longer in Tiberias. The Kilani family in Not Just Your Picture is not longer in Gaza. And Shehadeh’s father is no longer in the Rafah refugee camp. The films allowed their subjects to give families their memory back, the ones they were deprived of and which have been completely scattered since 1948.

In the collection are also films that attempt to present an alternative narrative to the conflict and how tanks and shells are not just occupying the bodies of Palestinians, but also their souls. Arab and Tarzan Nasser’s Condom Lead (2013) uses a dark comic twist to describe how a married couple attempts intimacy, but they are continually interrupted by mood-killing Israeli shelling. The bombing is more than a connotation of how life is interrupted and stopped. However, in May Odeh and Dia Azzeh’s Drawing for Better Dreams (2015), children’s dreams and aspirations become a reflection on the continuity of life, with a hint of resistance, despite the trauma that these children are carrying.

Since the start of the conflict in 1948, the Israeli military apparatus gave their operations code names like Cast Lead, Protective Edge, and Swords of Iron, adding a moral-boasting, patriotic, masculine, aggressive sentiment. Palestinian cinema should be seen as a mission to take back the narrative that the world has written for them, whether as victims in some cases, or as sole aggressors in others.

Palestinian filmmakers, whether they are inside Israel, the occupied territories or in diaspora, have always been able to reflect the suffering and dreams of their people. However, the films should not be limited to the role of propaganda, showing how indestructible Palestinians are, but as stories that humanize them and give them a voice to question, remember, and dream.

Nabulsi is a British-born director of Palestinian heritage who combines activism, education and cinema, producing films through her own not-for-profit media company Native Liberty Productions. She previously won a BAFTA and an Oscar nomination with her debut short, The Present (2020), which starred the same leading man as The Teacher, Palestinian heart-throb Saleh Bakri (The Band’s Visit, The Blue Caftan). Nabulsi and Bakri both won major prizes at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film International Film Festival earlier this month.

Nabulsi claims The Teacher is not a political film but a “human drama set in a political landscape.” Whether it is possible to make a non-political film about such a fiercely polarising conflict, particularly in the current highly charged climate, is arguable. But the heart of this modestly scaled story is a series of troubled father-son relationships, giving it a healthy shot at universal resonance. Nabulsi comes to her debut feature with fine ingredients, noble motives and urgently topical themes, but too often her inexperience lets her down as she wobbles unsteadily between soapy melodrama and low-energy thriller.

Billed as based on real events, The Teacher was inspired by the case of Gilad Shalit, a sergeant in the Israel Defence Force who was captured by Hamas in 2006 and held hostage for five years. After lengthy negotiations brokered by Egypt and Turkey, he was eventually released in exchange for over 1000 Palestinian prisoners. Nabulsi fictionalises Shalit as an Israeli-American called Nathaniel Cohen, and wisely never even names Hamas in the film, but otherwise the essentials are the same.

Bakri plays Basem, a kind-hearted Palestinian schoolteacher at a boys’ school in the West Bank. He takes a special fatherly interest in hot-headed Yacoub (played by Bakri’s own younger brother Mahmoud) and his more mild-mannered sibling Adam (Muhammad Abed El Rahman). The boys live in the same village as their teacher, and share a similar rocky relationship with the Israeli justice system. After witnessing his family home demolished by the authorities, a routine occurrence in the occupied territories, an incandescent Yacoub confronts an armed settler (played by the film’s production designer Nael Kanj) and is fatally wounded. Basem steps in to support the family, helping them build a murder case while diligently trying to steer Adam away from the temptation to avenge himself against a rigged system.

As these tragedies are unfolding, Basem’s old-fashioned, poetry-driven flirtation with British volunteer worker Lisa (Imogen Poots) eventually pays off with a full-blown romance. But complicating the path of true love is an unnamed Palestinian militant group who are holding Nathaniel Cohen hostage, and call on the teacher for help in hiding him. Despite his outward image as a peace-loving man of letters, it transpires that Basem has a guilt-haunted history of protesting against the occupation, serving time in jail and destroying his former marriage in the process. When Adam discoverers that Basem counsels peace while secretly helping armed resistance groups, he is driven to vigilante violence himself. Basem is forced to make desperate choices to save the boy from his worst impulses.

The Teacher has worthy motives, a capable cast and depressingly timely subject matter in its favour. But good intentions are not the same as good cinema. Far too much of Nabulsi’s screenplay feels like a thin first draft, passionless and poorly paced, with stiled dialogue and sketchy characters. The fatherly bond between teacher and student never feels convincing, while the simmering erotic chemistry between Basem and Lisa is oddly tepid too, given the hotness of the two actors. Nabulsi’s blandly conventional, underpowered directing style is a key flaw here, flattening the impact of events that should have had cinematic sweep, tragic gravitas or lusty sizzle.

In fairness, The Teacher is not a total dud. The cast do their best with clunky lines, especially Bakri, who can set a screen smouldering just by gazing soulfully towards a dusty border checkpoint. There may also be some educational value in Nabulsi introducing general cinema audiencew to routine injustices committed against Palestinians like house demolitions, teenage offenders sentenced to harsh adult sentences, or the burning of olive groves by incoming settlers. In one of the film’s most emotionally charged scenes, Basem assures the kidnapped IDF soldier’s anguished American father (Stanley Townsend) that the prisoner exchange deal will eventually go ahead “because your people believe that your son is worth a thousand of mine.” A few more of these sharper insights would have given much-needed bite to Nabulsi’s well-meaning but heavy-handed debut.

Director, screenwriter: Farah Nabulsi
Cast: Saleh Bakri, Imogen Poots, Muhammad Abed El Rahman, Stanley Townsend, Paul Herzberg, Mahmoud Bakri, Andrea Irvine
Cinematography: Gilles Porte
Editing: Mike Pike
Music: Alex Baranowski
Producers: Sawsan Asfari, Farah Nabulsi, Ossama Bawardi
Production companies: Cocoon Films (UK), Native Liberty Productions (UK), Philistine Films (Palestine)
World sales: Goodfellas, Paris
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival (Special Presentations)
In Arabic, English
115 minutes

All of them were at one time linked to a charismatic Islamic teacher known as “the  Anisa”, whose cult-like legacy is explored in intimate and often fascinating detail. But the highly personal nature of the film makes for a wobbly point of view and opens up multiple interpretations of the engrossing protagonist Hiba. It has won the Lebanese-American filmmaker the Albert Maysles Award for best new documentary director at Tribeca, as well as a grand jury award at the Sheffield DocFest for Best First Feature. Its screening in Egypt at the El Gouna Film Festival drew large, curious audiences.

Wearing numerous hats as director and producer, screenwriter, D.P. and one of the leading characters, an off-screen, camera-wielding Chehab goes at her family members (who include her pensive father and a religious-student brother) with cheerful insistence as she pries into their past. Although they have all given their consent to be filmed and are theoretically willing to discuss the effects of the sect on their lives, Chehab is not above bullying when her dad, for example, starts glossing over his dislike of “the Anisas”. Certainly they have left scorched earth behind them in the family, after the grandmother took her leave and the mother, Hiba, was traumatically kicked out, apparently for carving out too independent a place for herself.

All three women wear strict Islamic dress and tight head coverings, in contrast to their Western-style clothing when they were young in grainy home movies and wedding portraits. Hiba’s youthful beauty in a high school play is still intuitable behind her big glasses and hijab, and her calm face beams with the unstudied joy of a lay nun. She gave up her medical studies when the Great Anisa told her mother — then an initiate – that the world is full of doctors, but spreading God’s word is a higher calling.

This is an early hint that something wrong with the group that for many years became her priority, and indeed her whole life. She is called Dr. Hiba, presumably for her great learning, and when she holds religious classes her passion is capable of igniting all those who listen, even stirring the film audience. Watching TV on the bed with her amiable husband Ziad, she casually flips from banal domestic topics to suddenly reciting Qu’ranic verses together. Yet the filmmaker’s probing questions force Hiba to confront the things she once hid from Ziad – letters and poems to the Great Anisa, or the lies she told him about no flights being available to the U.S. during a critical moment in Lebanon’s civil war, so she could keep seeing her mentor in Syria.

In one unsettling moment, Hiba reads from notebooks written by the Anisa, with chilling passages like “there is no religion without a group; there is no group without a state; there is no state without obedience” and “we are followers, not innovators.”

Yet despite all, the Chehab family seems fairly normal and resilient, the 30-year marriage of Hiba and Ziad seems likely to outlast the film’s shocking revelations, and the loss of the group Hiba once fervently embraced appears to be a wound that is healing with time.

Most impressive because they are so unusual on screen are the scenes – there are several – of Hiba seemingly lost in a mystic trance. The idea of a transcendental Sufi-like Islam takes shape when she lectures on how there is no “I” anymore and “you just disappear into the Anisa.”

This very fine character study of a truly spiritual woman is undermined, however, by a slapdash approach to story-telling that obscures nuances and makes deciphering the filmmaker’s voice and opinions almost impossible. A loud and insistent musical commentary dominated by a forbidding drumbeat is far too suggestive of the dark side of religion, particularly when it is paired with highly theatrical black-and-white images of undefined symbolic import. But Chehab shows she has an original voice in this intimate drama of religious convictions and a talent that should blossom under more structured circumstances.

Director, producer, screenplay, cinematography: Jude Chehab
With: Hiba Khodr, Ziad Chehab, Doria Mouneimne
Editing: Fahd Ahmed
Music: William Ryan Fritch
Sound: Tom Drew
Production companies: Chicken & Egg Pictures
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival (Feature Documentary competition)
In Arabic
93 minutes

An opening title announces the film is “based on secretly recorded video smuggled out of Iran” and the filmmakers make good use of it, including many phone-taped scenes of the Jabbari family, prison visits and vigils outside forbidding walls, behind which executions are taking place. All this historic footage, cleverly intercut with stock shots of Tehran streets and traffic, serves to describe in gripping detail the personality, humanity and growing courage of Reyhaneh, whose own words are not taped, but read by Holy Spider actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi. But this is also the story of her family’s battle to save her from execution, and her mother Shole Pakravan evolves almost heroically from a minding-her-own-business middle class woman into a strong-willed activist and the organizer of those against capital punishment, making sure their voices are heard by the Iranian government and, eventually, internationally.

For audiences with an interest in Iran, this is an anguishing journey that pulls no punches in depicting pervasive misogyny toward women and the legal travesty of punishing the female victim of an assault who defended herself. It also offers some startling insights into what women are facing in a society that ignores their basic rights, and how far the court system is willing to go to repress any challenge to male dominance.

German director Niederzoll stays highly focused on her subject, reconstructing the moments of terror that led 19-year-old Reyhaneh to pick up a knife to defend herself from her attacker, followed by her arrest, a farcical trial and seven long years of imprisonment as she awaited execution by hanging. Editor Nicole Kortluke does a superb job structuring the film, premising the editing on the probability that not all members of the audience will be familiar with the case, nor will they know its ultimate outcome. For those viewers there is a good deal of additional tension built into the crescendo of anxiety as Reyhaneh’s execution draws near. Here there is no question of an appeals court, but the Islamic law of “blood revenge” which allows the family of a homicide victim to decide whether to let the convicted party hang or to forgive them and stay the execution.

The story begins when Reyhaneh, a bright middle class college girl and a budding interior designer, meets a man in a café, Morteza Sarbandi, who asks her to redesign his doctor’s office. It is a ruse to get her alone behind locked doors, and when Reyhaneh realizes he intends to rape her by force, she grabs a nearby knife and blindly stabs him. Complicating matters is the fact the Sarbandi is a former secret service agent, and the lead police investigator soon turns it into a “political case”. The headlines scream “Surgeon Murdered by Designer Girl” and only after a long search does the family find a lawyer willing to take on the case.

There are scale models of a crowded dormitory but no shots inside Evin prison, where she was initially beaten and tortured while the police planted false evidence in her home, or the even more fearsome Shahr-e Rey prison (“a mass grave for 2,000 women”) where she was held for many years along with “the dark side of society”. But Reyhaneh’s words bring her captivity alive in Ebrahimi’s modulated voice, never overly dramatic even when she describes the horrors of 30 lashes or seeing a young girl hanging by her arms.

Reyhaneh the prisoner withdraws in the final act, which is more properly her mother’s, as she negotiates with the religious Sarbandi family for mercy to save her daughter. Her interlocutor is the eldest son, since the women of the family don’t count, and he is very concerned about his father leaving behind a bad image. It’s no exaggeration to say the ending is a cliffhanger.

Director, screenplay: Steffi Niederzoll
With: Reyhaneh Jabbari, Shole Pakravan, Fereydoon Jabbari, Shahrzad Jabbari, Sharare Jabbari, Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Parvaneh Hajilou, Mohammad Mostafaei, Samira Mokarrami
Producers: Gilles Sacuto, Milena Poylo, Laurent Lavolé, Sina Ataeian Dena, Melanie Andernach, Knut Losen, Eva Laass, Céline Loiseau
Cinematography: Julia Daschner
Editing: Nicole Kortluke
Production design: Miren Oller
Music: Flemming Nordkrog
Sound: Andreas Hildebrandt, César Fernandez Borras, Anton Orarbrack, Guillaume Valeix
Production company: Made in Germany Filmproduktion GmbH
World Sales: Little Dream Entertainment
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival (Feature Documentary competition)
In Farsi
97 minutes

Albayaty is a Berlin-based French-Iraqi musician, artist and occasional film-maker whose slender body of previous screen credits includes the semi-autobiographical docu-drama Berlin Telegram (2012). Music is her main medium, and runs through this film like water, whether as fully composed songs or in poetic fragments of voice-over narration that she softly croons over a background wash of guitars and electronics. “I prefer to sing rather than speak,” the director explains, an opaque statement that makes more poignant sense as her knotty story unfolds.

An unusual blend of docu-musical and emotionally raw therapy session, From Abdul to Leila has an emphatically arty style and intensely solipsistic tone that will limit its mainstream audience potential. That said, those very same flavoursome qualities should give Albayaty’s film traction with more adventurous festivals, and with viewers drawn to confessional culture-clash stories, especially those exploring the complex post-colonial love-hate relations between Europe and the Middle East.

The Abdul of the title is Albayaty’s father, an exiled Iraqi who once fought for democracy, socialism and women’s rights in his homeland. Still a dapper and charismatic patriarch in old age, Abdul’s painful back story includes jail, torture and even a spell on the run with Saddam Hussein when the formerly progressive Ba’ath party split into violent factionalism. After fleeing to France more than 50 years ago, he married a Frenchwoman, Leila’s mother Simone, following an amusing first encounter where he proudly rebuffed her charitable offer of a free sandwich. Though now based between France and Egypt, Abdul remains deeply invested in political events back home in Iraq, especially after the horrors of the two Gulf Wars.

Leila’s fraught relationship with Abdul is the main narrative thread running through Albayaty’s film. Although her father refused to teach her his native Arabic language as a child, and even banned her from having Arab boyfriends in her teens, the director later became fascinated by her Iraqi heritage in adult life. She is now learning to speak and write in Arabic, and collaborating with Abdul on lyrics to her latest batch of songs. As much about repairing family rifts as creative self-expression, these mournful, sultry, heart-tugging chansons figure prominently in the film.

As From Abdul to Leila develops its non-linear zigzag narrative, Albayaty’s resurgent interest in her Arabic roots begins to appear obsessive and unhealthy, an ill-advised attempt to fix some broken part of herself. It certainly comes from a place of trauma, which the director initially hints at before piecing together the details from her own fragmentary memories. In 2004, galvanised by the second Gulf War, she insisted on making a sentimental pilgrimage to Iraq, against the advice of her family. There she witnessed lethal violence at close quarters that has haunted her ever since.

Soon after her return to France, Albayaty was seriously injured in a hit-and-run accident which, she hints darkly, may have been partly deliberate recklessness on her own part. The amnesia she suffered erased some of her scarring Iraq memories, but they resurfaced a decade later, apparently triggered by the 2015 Islamist attacks on the Bataclan concert hall and other Parisian sites. In common with her father, she now exhibits symptoms of PTSD. Indeed, on some level, this film is clearly an attempt to process long-buried trauma.

From Abdul to Leila is not structured as a conventional journey towards redemptive, healing closure. Indeed, it feels barely structured at all in places as Albayaty jump-cuts between past and present, art studio and recording studio, Berlin and Cairo, Brussels and rural France, guided more by a random collagist aesthetic than storytelling clarity. While anyone expecting formal journalistic rigour will find this Abstract Expressionist approach maddeningly untidy, more charitable viewers may find if thrillingly loose and punky. It is certainly a rich sensory mix of sounds, moods and locations.

Even if her wild mood swings demand a generous measure of patience and indulgence, Albayaty does focus long enough to gather some positive conclusions at the end of her sentimental journey. Learning Arabic enables her to chat with Syrian refugees in her Berlin neighbourhood, whose grisly accounts of state torture and murder put her own relatively minor trauma into sobering perspective. Co-writing songs with her father also feels like a successful exercise in reconciliation, a touching way to celebrate their shared cultural roots. In the film’s closing scenes, Abdul even concedes that the political landscape appears to be finally improving in Iraq, with cautious advances in democracy and gender equality. A hot mess of a film, sure, but real lives are messy sometimes.

Director: Leila Albayaty
Screenwriters: Leila Al Bayaty, David Deboudt
Leila Albayaty, Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Hana Albayaty, Simone Albayaty, Dalia Naous, Gaëlle Balthasart
Cinematography: Jonathan Bricheux, Leila Al Bayaty, Zoé Nutchey
Editing: Barbara Bossuet, Zoé Nutchey, Leila Al Bayaty
Sound: Nicolas Pommier, Gabor Ripli, Mikaël Barre, Leila Albayaty
Music: Leila Albayaty, Amélie Legrand, Maurice Louca, Wassim Mukdad, Hassan Al Hanafi
Producers: Michel Balagué, Julie Freres, Leila Al Bayaty
Production companies: Dérives (Belgium), Volte Films (Germany)
World sales: Dérives, julie@derives.be
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival (Feature Documentary Competition)
In Arabic, French, English
92 minutes

In his speech accepting the Lifetime Career Achievement Award from El Gouna Film Festival, Egyptian director Marwan Hamed spent almost four minutes on stage naming film professionals he described as “partners”. From veteran actors and directors to producers, scriptwriters, mentors, novelists, executive producers, contemporary directors, film school instructors, costume designers, cinematographers, art directors, music composers and others, he noted how all of them had helped establish his prosperous filmmaking career.

Marwan’s speech was not the longest in the history of awardees. But taken alongside the statements of El Gouna’s Artistic Director Marianne Khoury about the importance of the festival’s role in supporting the Egyptian film industry, his list of mentions shows that films are not a one-person, artistic solo performance, but a collaborative dynamic where highly talented individuals step in to create the movie we end up watching.

In each of his films, Hamed’s choices and collaborations with the powerhouses of the industry allowed him to surpass his contemporaries commercially and internationally, eventually granting him the versatility to brilliantly navigate different genres, whether political, action, romance, horror, or historical dramas.

Being born the son of Wahid Hamed, who is regarded as one of Egypt’s greatest screenwriters, was a cornerstone in growing up in a family and professional circles which took cinema seriously, confronting state-censorship, conservative views and a continuously changing socio-political landscape.

Hamed’s debut short feature Li Li (2001), an adaptation of prolific novelist Youssef Idris, was produced by his father and featured multiple acting talents such as Amr Waked, Dina Nadeem, Saeed Saleh, and Samy El-Adl, and a strong behind-the-camera team. The film elegantly dissects the dilemma between sin and virtue in a young imam appointed to administer a mosque in a working-class neighbourhood wrecked by drug trafficking. On one hand, he preaches piety to the residents, but on the other, he has to fight his lust towards an attractive female neighbour. The film won the Audience Award at the 2001 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.

In 2007, luck struck again when he directed The Yacoubian Building. The film is based on an impressively bold novel by world-famous writer Alaa Al-Aswany and was produced by Issad Younis, a heavyweight on Egypt’s production scene, and was spearheaded with a star-loaded cast including Adel Imam, Yousra, Nour Al-Sherif, Khaled Saleh, Khaled Al-Sawy and many others.

Hamed delivered a masterpiece that captured the essence of the social and political decay and violence in post-2000 Egypt, through intimate and behind-closed-doors interactions between the characters, all of whom lived in an 1920 architectural gem of a residential building in downtown Cairo. Despite being a political drama, market-wise the film was a blockbuster and received waves of criticism from conservative politicians due to featuring a queer character. The film also bravely portrayed torture in police custody, whose proliferation led to the 25 January 2011 revolution.

The momentum of this powerful start was maintained with Ibrahim Al-Abyad (2009). Although it was vocally criticized at the time as distorting Egypt’s image abroad due to its violent storyline, the film can be considered one of the best Egyptian action films that captured, for the lack of a better description, the ‘aesthetics of violence’ in some extremely impoverished residential areas in Egypt.

Hamed is not a documentary filmmaker. With an exceptional script from Abbas Abu Al-Hassan, and a mesmerizing soundtrack by Hisham Nazieh, he created a tormented love story where childhood trauma, fragile masculinity, and the absence of rule of law drive the plot. The film follows Ibrahim Al-Abyad (Ahmed El-Saka), a thug and drug dealer in love with Horryia (Hend Sabry). Both live in a slum, extrajudicially run by a big-time trafficker (veteran actor Mahmoud Abdel Aziz). The film was shot in unauthorized settlements in old Cairo, with the help of executive assistant director/now producer Safy El-Din Mahmoud, whom Hamed mentioned as one of the many crew members who assisted in location settings, fight scenes, props, and extras’ management. Many local action films were created afterwards around similar themes, dubbed by the media as ‘thug films’, but none were able to capture Hamed’s intimate and bloody romance.

In his two-part The Blue Elephant (2014) and The Blue Elephant 2 (2019), Hamed works with best-selling novelist Ahmed Mourad, entering the almost abandoned world of Egyptian genre films. Since the 1990s, horror and psycho-thriller films have been close to non-existent, or poorly made. The first part, based on a novel by the same name, follows an alcoholic psychiatrist who lost his family in a car accident. He returns to work in a mental hospital containing defendants accused of murder who are awaiting psychiatric evaluation, a plot perfect for Hamed’s revolutionary visual storytelling, which set new standards for audiovisual effects in Egyptian cinema. There, he meets an old friend.

Starring popular actor Kareem Abdel Aziz, Nelly Kareem and Khaled Al-Sawy, the psycho-thriller deals with demonic possession, exorcism, and mental illness in a Muslim country, in a contemporary style that abandons Hollywood horror themes, creating a unique and very Egyptian infrastructure for a solid genre film. Mourad’s writing and Hamed’s visual representation left the regional MENA audience wanting more. The Blue Elephant 3 is expected to enter production at the end of 2024.

Like the traumatized protagonist in The Blue Elephant, the main characters in The Originals (2017) and Diamond Dust (2018) are also individuals crushed by everyday life but alienated in one way or another, whether from the corporate world or political injustice. Both films, also written in collaboration with Mourad, were box office hits and won best director awards at the Porto International Film Festival and Casablanca Arab Film Festival, respectively. The films were shot by cinematographer Ahmed Morsy, who skillfully captured true visual splendour, allowing Hamed’s creative visualization of the multilayered plots.

The Blue Elephant 2 and Kira & El Gin (2022), were produced by Synergy Productions, a filmmaking arm of United Media Services, which owns 40 companies that dominate news and media in Egypt. The transition to a bigger production allowed Hamed to go to the max in Kira & El Gin, a historical drama about resisting the British occupation during the early 20th century in Egypt. Based on Mourad’s book 1919 by Mourad, the film offers an anticolonial storyline, with two male bad boy characters, Kareem Abdel Aziz and Ahmed Ezz, leading a guerilla mob that engages British soldiers.

Thanks to its ultranationalist one-man-against-all hero, a super-popular genre in post-2013 Egypt, along with impressive historical research, custom design, and art direction, the film grossed 119 million Egyptian pounds (U.S. $2.3m), leading it to be screened at the 2023 International Rotterdam Film Festival as part of the Limelight section which programmes audience favourites and international award-winners.

Hopefully, Hamed’s career award at El Gouna will open a discussion about the necessity of building a solid, local, commercially successful industry, based on a strong community of film workers and professionals. A strong industry will increase the exposure of Egyptian films abroad and allow local filmmakers to be more liberal with genres and styles. Marwan Hamed is a great example.

On the other hand, viewers are likely to react in different ways to the abrupt flights of fancy that interrupt the tired reunion of a husband and wife with a school chum they haven’t seen for years. The setting is a tropical resort where the trio seem to be the only guests – in fact, the only people seen in the film, apart from some background figures. Amid an overgrown id of untended vegetation, a sparkling azure swimming pool becomes the stage where the never-named husband and wife (Kelvin Ho and Doreen Toh) glare at each other as they try to revive some kind of meaningful relationship with the taciturn Heng (Peter Yu) — the only other person who has showed up for the class reunion. It emerges that the boorish husband (the “class monitor”) bullied Heng in school, while his wife had a youthful romance with him.

They are all pushing 60 but Heng has kept in enviable shape, as he demonstrates by effortlessly swimming laps in the pool. The film’s opening scenes have a vague air of menace hovering over them, with the couple’s suppressed anger seeming ready to burst into violence and lead to a crime, perhaps even a murder. But then the camera begins to plunge underwater and Yeo’s screenplay changes register.

Up to this point the dialogue has been purposefully banal and redundant, not to say irritating, like the wife’s fantasies of seducing Heng with a few well-turned words. The turning point comes when she reappears in what is apparently an earlier time, dressed with the breezy, billowing femininity of a young woman, beside Heng with his long graying hair cut in a retro style. Interestingly, no attempt is made to rejuvenate their faces, suggesting this is some kind of a memory. In this long-ago tete-a-tete, delicately poised between the romantic and the ludicrous, Heng hesitantly reveals the true obstacle to their love: he has a long fish tail instead of legs.

Perhaps more than flashbacks, these windows on the supernatural – directly calling up major influences on Yeo like Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Filipino master Lav Diaz – fall into a category bridging dream and imagination, which are left fluid and up to the viewer to decide whether to go with the flow or feel disaffected by a frustrating lack of narrative progress. And the editing is leisurely, though admirable in not adding confusion to a difficult story.

The nonhuman drama is casually intercut with a pilgrimage the unhappy couple is making on the advice of a priest, apparently to release the husband’s bad karmas and improve his flagging health. The idea is to cart around a live fish in a Styrofoam box and release it into the sea, burning incense and reciting prayers along the way. Engaged in their common purpose, the couple does not seem quite so hostile to each other, and at one point the ailing husband awkwardly tells his wife he’s like to “start over”. Though the narrative path goes off on a lot of detours, with various accidents and disappearances and the fish almost dying, it does eventually lead to a surprise conclusion that, thanks to Doreen Toh’s expressiveness even in long shot, could be described as moving.

It seems clear that Yeo’s screenplay refers not just to contemporary Asian cinema but to the culture’s fables and folklore, from whence come talking fish and the unsettling background noise of a giant beast snoring. But just as you don’t need to have read the Brothers Grimm to get their scary vibes, so here the sense of supernatural danger is clear. It will be more of a stretch for some audiences to accept the film’s quirky tone, in-between real human feelings and farcical situations.

To his credit, Yeo stretches his budget remarkably well, making do with a simple cloth fish costume to turn the stylish Heng into an equally stylish sea creature. All three actors, who initially seem very nondescript, reveal depths of character, even Kelvin Ho’s exasperating husband who is always falling down. The tropical atmosphere blends easily into the characters’ mental landscape in D.P. Lincoln Yeo’s dreamy lensing that incorporates visions like brightly lit caves and an enchanting Buddhist temple floating on a still lake.

Director, screenplay: Nelson Yeo
Cast: Peter Yu, Doreen Toh, Kelvin Ho
Producers: Sophia Sim, Si En Tan
Coproducer: Yulia Evina Bhara
Cinematography: Lincoln Yeo
Editing: Armiliah Aripin
Art directors: Lou Shenna, Mark Chua, Li Shuen Lam
KCostume design: Lou Shenna, Megan Lim
Sound: Lijie Cheng
Production companies: Momo Film Co., KawanKawan Media, Widewall Pictures
World Sales: Lights On 
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival (Out of competition)
In Chinese, English, Singlish
 77 minutes

Perhaps inevitably, many critics have drawn comparisons between Scrapper and last year’s Cannes sensation Aftersun (2022), another emotionally charged father-daughter story from another young British female director, Charlotte Wells. But any parallels in this tale of two Charlottes are largely superficial. Regan strikes a much more quirky and playful tone, flirting with magical realist elements and recurring chorus characters who break the fourth wall to comment on the narrative. At times these style-heavy elements feel a little forced and cartoonish, but Scrapper mostly finds a tonal sweet spot between self-conscious artifice and cutesy whimsy.

A winningly magnetic, hilariously deadpan presence on screen, Campbell plays Georgie, an unusually wise 12-tear-old living on a rainbow-coloured social housing estate on the semi-rural fringes of London. After the death of her mother Vicky (Olivia Brady, glimpsed only in flashback), Georgie now willingly lives alone, smartly keeping social workers and schoolteachers at bay with a fabricated back story that a non-existent uncle is now looking after her welfare. To pay the bills, she steals bicycles with her best friend Ali (Alin Uzun), which she then sells on to a local dealer Zeph (Ambreen Razia). Regan may be alluding to Vittorio de Sica’s Italian neo-realist classic Bicycle Thieves (1948) here, but cycle parts also play a key emotional role as Georgie works throigh the stages of grief. In a private locked room, she is building a surreal tower of scrap metal, apparently with fanciful dreams of climbing up to visit her late mother in heaven.

Georgie’s proud self-reliance take an unexpected knock when Jason (Dickinson), a 30-year-old man-child claiming to be the long-lost father she never knew, arrives out of the blue. Initially suspicious, but fearing her fakery will be exposed, she grudgingly allows him to stay. Regan then charts the duo’s hesitant journey towards mutual trust and friendship, which involves a shared interest in petty crime, dancing, metal-detecting walks in the countryside, and Jason clumsily trying to assume adult responsibility after Georgie beats up one of her mean-girl bullies during an emotionally fraught meltdown. In one inspired set-piece, the pair bond by play-acting dialogue for an upper-class couple they spot on a train station platform, a totally implausible scenario but a great opportunity for both stars to display their comic chops.

Regan comes to cinema after a colourful career as a paparazzi photographer, prolific music video maker and shorts director. Along the way she picked up BAFTA nominations and notable industry fans, including Michael Fassbender, who has an executive producer credit on Scrapper. Fassbender reportedly instructed his production company DMC Film to find the next Andrea Arnold, which makes sense here in the working-class London edgelands milieu at least.

Even if Scrapper is occasionally guilty of sentimental button-pushing and softening fairly dark themes, it is consistently funny, big-hearted and illuminated from within by two great lead performances. Drawing on her own family upbringing, Regan’s assured debut is a refreshingly positive portrait of proletarian lives typically depicted by British film-makers as dour, drab and dysfunctional. She even insisted on repainting her East London housing estate location in bright pastel colours, an exacting visual detail worthy of Antonioni. Cinematographer Molly Manning Walker, who made her own splashy feature-directing debut this year with How to Have Sex, makes a delicious visual feast out of this vivid Wes Anderson palette.

Director, screenwriter: Charlotte Regan
Cast: Lola Campbell, Harris Dickinson, Alin Uzun, Cary Crankson, Carys Bowkett, Ambreen Razia, Ayokunle Oyesanwo, Ayobami Oyesanwo, Ayooluwa Oyesanwo, Freya Bell
Producer: Theo Barrowclough
Executive producers: Eva Yates, Farhana Bhula, Michael Fassbender, Conor McCaughan, Daniel Emmerson, Jim Reeve
Cinematography: Molly Manning Walker
Editing: Billy Sneddon, Matteo Bini
Production designer: Elena Muntoni
Costume designer: Oliver Cronk
Music: Patrick Jonsson
Production companies: BFI (UK), BBC Film (UK), Great Point Media (UK), DMC Film (UK)
World sales: Charades
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival
In English
84 minutes

The federation, which selects and manages some 80 critics’ juries at international festivals around the world, will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2025, a year Shawky and his team are preparing for. As the first Middle Eastern and African critic to be in this position, Shawky aspires for more diversity and inclusion, as well as extending the group’s support to colleagues marginalized geographically or financially in East Asia and Latin America. 

He also heads the CineGouna SpringBoard, one of the industry arms of the El Gouna Film Festival, which has chosen 19 projects this round: 12 in development and 7 in post-production. Winners will be granted up to U.S. $290,000 in cash and service prizes offered by the festival, its sponsors and partners.

The Film Verdict: Can you tell me how you got to be elected President of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI)? What were the steps?

Ahmed Shawky: I have been part of the board of FIPRESCI since 2018 and responsible for activities in the Arab world and Africa. In 2021, I ran for vice president position and got it. None of these positions have ever been occupied by critics from the Arab world, Africa, or the third world in general. They were filled by Westerners — Europeans mainly and sometimes Americans. I was supposed to continue in the position of vice president for two years from 2023 till 2025, but at the same time the president Isabelle Danel ended her term of four years. And the Federation was looking for someone dynamic, with communication skills, flexibility;  a frequent traveler who is aware of the industries of festival and film criticism. Whoever is president has to be aware of the dynamics of the 80 juries that tour the world and understand that every festival is different. I was asked to run for the position, and there were no competitors, so I won the elections which took place at Miskolc in September during the federation’s board meeting. The term is for two years, and can be extended another two years.

What is crucial now is to work in the coming period on FIPRESCI’s 100th anniversary, which will be in 2025. There will be several activities and events which will be announced soon.

TFV: You raised the point that you are the first critic from the Arab world and Africa to fill these positions in FIPRESCI, including the presidency. Having been raised and having worked in this part of the world, what are your goals as president? And outside the Arab world, what other pressing issues are there on the FIPRESCI table? 

Shawky: Interacting with the international film community, sometimes I get shocked by how some basic information can be lacking from the knowledge of pure-hearted and educated individuals. They are not racist nor do they look down upon others, they are critics with decades of years of experience in the film industry, but it’s possible they don’t know basic differences between Arab countries; for example, that Egypt and Tunisia are in Africa. The majority of people in the film industry are open-minded, invested in learning and knowing about others and the world, but it’s possible that some are affected by the culture they grew up in, as well as the centrism of European cinema/festivals and that of the American mainstream industry. Everyone is invested in changing this, but we need people to assist in the change. FIPRESCI, for example, started in the last six years to adapt more diverse approaches. Until 2018, there were only two juries in the Arab world, in Cairo and Carthage. Now in 2023, we have juries in Cairo, Gouna, Luxor, Ismailia, Amman, Rabat, and Carthage. And similarly, the number of jury members has grown from Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. And we have expanded to include and accept individual critics as members from countries that do not have local federations or associations such as Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria. 

However, it is important to say that I am not only a president for Arab and African critics, but also for other countries. Hence I have a responsibility towards critics from other regions who are also marginalized, for example, because of the travel costs. If you are stationed in the Arab world, you have more access to festivals than critics in East Asia or Latin America. These are two big issues we are addressing and working on, for FIPRESCI to become more active in these two regions and to help critics from these areas participate in more activities in Europe and other continents.

TFV: Many, if not the majority, of critics in MENA (Middle East – North Africa), Africa, Latin America, Asia, and even East Europe have to work two or three or more jobs in order to earn a living. As a federation for critics who work in the film industry, how do you see this?

This has to do with one’s lifestyle and most importantly how to secure a living. What we are used to, and what colleagues in western Europe are discovering, is that it is very difficult to sustain a living from only writing criticism. Some colleagues started their careers at a time when employment dynamics were different and where a critic could be employed by a newspaper or radio station, providing them a decent income and covering their traveling costs to foreign festivals. We can roughly say that only 1% can do this now. Currently, critics engage in academia, festival organization, or any activity partially related to film as a way to secure a living. Personally, I wish I could write articles and get paid for them and be able sustain myself and my family, but this is challenging.

TFV: The war in Gaza has affected the stand of many festivals in the Arab region, and it is expected to affect festivals in Europe where polarisation is at its peak, with vocal supporters of both sides of the conflict. Having members from all over the world, how is FIPRESCI following this?

As a federation, we have not announced a stand regarding the current situation. Our communications in the last two months have been functional, dealing with the cancellation of Cairo and Carthage for example, or other change of plans. We are scheduled to meet and discuss this extensively, especially as it is expected to be brought up in different film events, so we have to have a clear stand.

Personally, I am for the rights of all oppressed people worldwide, and of course an immediate non-conditional ceasefire to protect the lives of men, women and children. The situation has radically escalated and cannot be accepted in any humane aspect.

TFV: What do you think of the cancellations of some Arab festivals since October?

Shawky: I am proud of my profession, and I see it has an important role in mobilizing public opinion and declaring positions on current events. That is why I was not supportive of any festival’s decision to cancel their edition in the Arab world. No one asks a doctor, banker, or a shopkeeper not to go to work because of the war. Those who see cinema, discussions, films, and festivals only as sources of entertainment with no role to play in times of crises, unintentionally look down on their work, and may believe that they are practicing a job that is not decent or important. I am lucky that the festival I am working with, El Gouna, is one which will be held.

Since its first edition, El Gouna’s slogan has been “Cinema for humanity”. The festival had to make a stand amid the current events. The stand is shedding light on Palestinian cinema with the Window on Palestine programme and including a panel discussion on Palestinian cinema as well as the impact of film in similar times. This is a commitment that all the festivals were clear and united about, keeping in mind that we are an industry-focused festival, not a politicised festival.

TFV: As part of your work in the CineGouna SpringBoard, how many submissions have you received? And how many were chosen?

Shawky: We received more than 160 submissions, either in development or in post production. This is the biggest number of submissions we have received since the establishment of our festival, which implies an increasing amount of Arabic projects being developed. In two stages, 19 projects were chosen, 12 in development and 7 in post production. With the previously planned October edition, the total number of awards was going to surpass $400,000 but now, with changes and the cancellation of some sponsors, the awards will be around $290,000, which will also be the highest in the history of the festival. 

TFV: Now 12 years after the Arab Spring, are you seeing changes in the narratives of the projects presented from the Arab world? Why do you think Middle Eastern films in international festivals are limited to certain genres?

Shawky: Filmmakers, festival decision makers, programmers are part of society. Current events and public discourse affect them one way or another. It is understandable that if the media and the public care about a certain issue, the chance this topic will be selected in a festival will increase. The majority of Arab films are funded by cultural institutions which support certain causes such as diversity, racial and gender equality and political freedoms. So it is reasonable that this produces a compass that guides the selection of projects. For example, after the Arab Spring, Egypt was at the center of interest; then it was Syria, then Sudan. I assume a rebound in Palestine topics will take place. This happens in an organic manner, but affects films negatively: encouraging filmmakers to change their interests and favor narratives that might get funded, rather than working freely in a romantic or action genre, for example.

TFV: And how do you think Arab filmmakers can break free from this cycle? 

Shawky: The presence of a strong local market and industry. As long as films do not have a strong domestic market and depend on being selected by Cannes, Berlin, or Venice and finding a European distributor to screen it in seven or eight theatres, we will continue to be at the mercy of this cycle. For example, the South Korean, Japanese, and Chinese filmmakers are able to be more liberal with genres than their Middle Eastern counterparts. This is not a DNA thing. They [South Korean, Japanese, and Chinese filmmakers| are able to make horror, action and comedy because they have strong domestic markets that cover their costs and allow them to profit. For them, the success of their film in a European festival is a positive thing, but it doesn’t affect their success and their solid filmographies. Any attempt to break free from Western capital and its effect on Arab narratives starts from establishing a local popular fanbase. 

After two postponements in October due to the war in the nearby Gaza Strip, the powerhouses behind El Gouna Film Festival talk about their decision to bravely carry on with their 2023 edition, their support of Palestinian cinema, and the importance of art during times of war.

Executive Director and co-founder of the festival Intishal Al-Timimi and Festival Director and veteran filmmaker and producer Marianne Khoury tell The Film Verdict about opening up El Gouna’s programme, making it available to young filmmakers and cinephiles in Cairo, and how they see the festival’s future in the continuously changing region, as well as aspiring to be “the Rotterdam of the Middle East”.

The Film Verdict: How did the programming team and the administration follow the news and decide to postpone the festival, later announcing a new special edition of El Gouna?

Marianne Khoury: From the beginning, we were closely following the situation. We first decided to postpone; then the second time, we felt that the situation was continuing to escalate. Even before the start of the war, we had the intention and the idea of the El Gouna festival not just as a focus on ceremonial aspects, but engaging with wider audiences. In this special edition, we kept the impressive programme intact, while adding the Window on Palestine programme.

It will be a different edition than the ones before. The festival’s essence and cinematic mission are the same, including the industry aspects. There might be fewer guests and celebrities.

TFV: After 7 October and the subsequent escalation in the war in Gaza, several festivals and artistic activities were cancelled, citing that this was not the time for art or movies. But El Gouna eventually decided to hold its 6th edition. How did you see that?

Intishal Al-Timimi: It is not easy. We postponed twice and held the festival, and others cancelled. I can not judge anyone. The cruelty of the disaster and the brutality that the people of Gaza were subjected to have led many people to be confused. I don’t want to be a preacher. We as a festival thought it wasn’t easy to hold this year’s edition, but we have reached an equation where we think that the filmmaking community is supportive. We never dealt with the festival as a party. We deal with it as a cultural and social event. Culture should not be a victim that we must throw under the bus.

We are presenting a solid and authentic Palestinian programme. And it is not for show. It is a well-studied film list with short and long features, classics and premieres. In addition we will host a panel named “Camera in Crisis: A Lens on Palestine’ which explores the intricate landscape of filmmaking in Palestine. It sheds light on the challenges that resilient people face, inviting audiences to gain a deeper understanding of the human experiences within Palestine.

Other events, collaborations, and initiatives will take place inside the festival, concentrating not just on Palestine but also on Sudan. We are proud to present this special edition, in which the programme remains the same as the original, yet expanded. 

TFV: Regarding international guests, was there a concern about holding the festival close to Western Christmas and New Year’s?

 Khoury: We discussed this with the whole team many times. But there was an essential aspect in this: we really wanted the festival to take place before the end of the year, not in 2024. The only free dates were 14-21 December. It was sensitive because it is close to Christmas, but we also had to consider the dates of the Marrakech Film Festival and those of the Red Sea Film Festival to avoid overlap with either. We are all one community and industry. The guests (filmmakers and professionals) get invited to all these festivals.

TFV: Are you concerned that El Gouna’s pro-Palestine position might affect the festival’s relationship with European festivals and cultural institutions, especially since most of them have taken a position in a different direction? 

Khoury: We are talking about convictions. We are clearly supporting Palestine and Palestinian cinema for the administration and the festival. Our stand is clear. I understand tensions are high.. however, the images and news we see … .the reality is very, very painful…far from imaginable. What is happening is not a war. It is a genocide. However, El Gouna is a cinematic platform. This is the impact of cinema, it is a weapon to show images that are underrepresented and to give them a voice.

That is why we decided we wanted to focus on Palestinian cinema, with excellent films curated in collaboration with the Palestine Film Institute. It includes new ones such as The Teacher by Farah Nabulsi and Bye Bye Tiberias by Lina Soualem. 

TFV: Do you think that the conflict and its ramifications in the U.S. and Europe will affect the funding given to Palestinian filmmakers?  

Al-Timimi: At this point, it is a new moment in the world. The solidarity with the Palestinian cause is indeed the overwhelming reaction on the level of the people. This is the first time that cultural institutions are proceeding with caution, especially in Europe, despite having been longtime supporters of the Palestinians. The operation that Hamas did on 7 October took everyone by surprise. In Europe, there is silence towards the sheer destruction that we see in Gaza. I am concerned that this will affect Palestinian filmmakers in the short run, not in the long run.

TFV: Intishal, El Gouna was postponed in 2022, but the crew continued to watch films, travel, and follow the industry’s insights. What were your reflections in this pause? And what do you think El Gouna’s role should be in the future? 

Al-Timimi: The pause for one edition had two sides. First the cycle of work stopped but there was a general feeling among the Arab and international film experts that something was missing: the El Gouna Festival in 2022. This gave the staff a sense of appreciation for what we worked on over the last five years. The festival is perceived differently. Some criticized it harshly. Some appreciate it sincerely. We present many prestigious films. It is also a place of financial funding and logistical support for filmmakers. This work was touched in the missed year. There was an overwhelming opinion that this pause would lead the festival to be canceled, walking on the same path as the Dubai International Film Festival, but internally we were calm.

Our programme represents a convergence of cinematic brilliance and the power of storytelling that transcends borders. Among the titles included in this showcase are Anatomy of a Fall by Justine Triet, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes; the 2023 Berlinale’s Golden Bear winning documentary On the Adamant by Nicolas Philibert and Guto Parente’s The Strange Path that swept four major awards at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival.

This festival was created to stay. During this gap year, there were talent reinforcements in CineGouna funding initiatives, hospitality and logistics, such as bringing aboard Marianne Khoury. Her presence and influence on the programme and the direction of the festival were essential. The festival had to be more popular with the audience, and she was up for this challenge. There was always talk that El Gouna was a gated city and travelling to it is challenging, so our audience outreach initiatives are hopefully effective in developing this aspect.

TFV: Marianne, this is your first edition as an Artistic Director at El Gouna, a year after the festival was postponed in 2022. There are high expectations regarding programming, films, and organization. How are you managing that?

Khoury: This is my first festival and after a year’s break, indeed; however, when I arrived, there was already a lot of hard work taking place. Films were already being negotiated, and when I arrived the selection increased. What calmed me was that I always admired El Gouna’s programming and its direction. It was a smooth transition.

I participated in the audience outreach programme, first for El Gouna residents. We did the same with inviting young people to the festival as part of the CineGouna Emerge where they can watch films and participate in the workshops and discussions. We also worked on creating a parallel programme to be screened in Cairo’s Zawya arthouse cinema, and this is for individuals who cannot travel and get accommodation in El Gouna; they can enjoy the films in downtown Cairo. 

TFV: In the future as the festival gets more and more established on the world map of film festivals, would you like El Gouna to have the same effect as which of these international festivals: Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, Venice, Karlovy Vary?  

Khoury: I personally think it should be “the Rotterdam of the Middle East”, because IFFR was the first festival where one understood what an industry is. You can not be isolated from the rest of the world and make cinema. You have to connect in a dynamic circle of network. Cinema is not just art but also an industry, market, and personnel organization. In September, many Egyptian film professionals, producers, editors, and filmmakers started to demand laws that regulate their working rights. El Gouna has a unique opportunity in the industry both locally in Egypt and in MENA. Gouna can play a leading role in the market, holding all the industry’s activities (pitching, meeting producers, brainstorming, networking) in the same space. And this role is not static; we have to monitor the movements in the surroundings and their activities. Hence El Gouna has to develop its capabilities to reposition itself in this field.

Al-Timimi: I agree with Marianne. Rotterdam is the first festival to develop co-productions. The Hubert Bals Fund is a prominent example of that. We, in El Gouna, are the first international film festival in the Arab world which, since its first edition, has started working on co-productions. People call us the “Cannes of the Middle East” because of the presence of celebrities on the red carpet and because of the summer vibes of both festivals. This was rather forced on us. We get massive amounts of gossip coverage of the celebrities in the festival’s first week, but the critical analytical coverage lasts for more than six months. In El Gouna, celebrities don’t just attend the opening and the closing but are also active over the week in the diverse activities of the festival. We want to assert that this is a serious festival and reflects the production scene in the Arab world.

Screening this week in El Gouna film festival in Egypt, How to Have Sex is a highly assured and superbly acted first feature from cinematographer turned director Walker, who was just 29 when she made it. After winning the Un Certain Regard Prize in Cannes, where it was bought by boutique distributor MUBI, it has since accumulated many more awards and accolades, including the Discovery Prize at the 36th European Film Awards last week. Part of a buzzy rising wave of young British women film-makers, Walker also served as cinematographer on another of this year’s much-feted debuts, Charlotte Regan’s Sundance prize-winner Scrapper.

Walker’s timely, impressively nuanced, very #MeToo  meditation on sexual consent and gender politics comes smartly packaged as a lively, funny, warmly human depiction of three British teenage girls on the giddy cusp of womanhood. The setting is Malia on the Greek island of Crete, a garish party resort known for catering to younger crowds, mostly binge-drinking Brits. Arriving to celebrate the end of their final school exams, 16-year-old Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake) and Em (Enva Lewis) fling themselves into a never-ending whirl of chain smoking, clubbing, skinny-dipping, singing off-key karaoke and getting obliterated on cheap booze. But behind all this brash gonzo hedonism, Tara is anxiously weighing up mounting peer pressure to finally lose her virginity.

Initially passing themselves off as 18-year-old college students, Tara and Em begin cautiously flirting with the two older boys in their adjoining hotel room, a heavily tattooed joker nicknamed “Badger” (Shaun Thomas) and his more quietly self-assured pal Paddy (Samuel Bottomley). A sweet mutual attraction between Tara and Badger soon develops, played out through a riot of all-day drinking, late-night clubs and bawdy party games which sometimes spill over into live sex shows. An understated holiday romance also blossoms between Skye and the boys’ third room-mate Paige (Laura Ambler), a subplot that might once have fuelled an entire film about illicit queer desire, but which feels pleasingly matter-of-fact in 2023 eliciting no comment from the other protagonists.

How to Have Sex shifts tone midway though, when Tara gives in to sexual advances that she has not really solicited, and is too inexperienced to rebuff. Walker underscores this transition with a stark switch in audio and visual grammar, moving from fast-cut, sense-blurring, music-driven overload to a more contemplative mix of slow zooms, ominous absences and fragmentary flashbacks. Viewed in the harsh morning-after daylight, the main late-night party street of Malia suddenly looks like a trashed, deserted war zone. A very powerful change in emotional weather, all achieved without explanatory dialogue.

The events depicted in How to Have Sex have autobiographical resonance for Walker, who went on several similarly messy sunshine holidays in her teenage years. She was also sexually assaulted at 16 after her drink was spiked on a night out in London. And yet, refreshingly, she does not paint a simplistic binary picture of male predators and female victims here. The boys are generally likeable, their actions are just shaped by a hypersexualised youth culture where entitlement and subtle coercion are normalised. The girls have agency and outward self-confidence, but they are also assailed by constant societal pressure to be attractive, popular, and easygoing about sex.

Walker bravely explores the liminal zones of sexual consent here, where emotional context matters more than words spoken, and where even a half-grudging “yes” can mask a contradictory tangle of fearful doubts and uneven power games. Every woman watching these scenes will recognise this scenario, and most will have experienced something similar. When the director screened How to Have Sex to schools, she understandably met with heated debate and polarised views about whether the film even depicts an actual assault.

With its relentless first-act focus on boorish teenage pleasure-seeking, deafening dance music and alcoholic excess, How To Have Sex may alienate older viewers who find its message obvious and its adolescent milieu too limited. That said, one of the film’s core strengths is that is never feels like a preachy, glum, issue-driven drama, because it emphatically is not. However serious the main theme, the wider story is also a celebration of female friendship, solidarity and resilience, even in the face of bittersweet life lessons and bitchy mean-girl shade-throwing. Very strong performances, especially from rising star McKenna-Bruce, are also key selling points. Before the shoot, Walker spent weeks partying and bonding with cast and crew, creating a close-knit chemistry that pays off on screen.

How to Have Sex has a seductively rich, super-saturated, neon-drenched look. Walker and her documentary-trained cinematographer Nicolas Canniccioni create such an authentically sweaty, sun-soaked, immersive portrait of Malia’s hedonistic holiday hotspots, it comes as a surprise to discover they actually shot the film off-season in chilly November with an army of extras. George Buxton’s vivid costume choices are both visually and dramatically smart too, often putting actors in clothes that were wrongly sized or uncomfortable, heightening the sense that these young women are not fully at ease performing their assigned roles in the male-gaze marketplace.

Director, screenwriter: Molly Manning Walker
Cast: Mia McKenna-Bruce, Lara Peake, Samuel Bottomley, Shaun Thomas, Enva Lewis, Laura Ambler
Cinematography: Nicolas Canniccioni
Editing: Fin Oates
Music: James Jacob
Costume designer: George Buxton
Production companies: Film4 (UK), BFI (UK), MK2 (France), Head Gear Films (UK), Metrol Technology (UK), Heretic (Greece)
World sales: MK2
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival
In English
91 minutes

In addition to the program which was previously announced, this edition will include a special program dedicated to Palestinian cinema, in collaboration with the Palestine Film Institute, aiming to shed light on the current situation in Gaza.

Additionally, a fundraising dinner is planned to gather donations for humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza in coordination with the Egyptian Red Crescent during the festival.

The Festival has announced it will be held without any celebrations, to reaffirm El Gouna Film Festival’s solidarity with the Palestinian people.