Author: Deborah Young

The topic is marriage and the four compulsively watchable stories that make up Noha Adel’s ‘Spring Came Laughing’ nail the shallowness, hypocrisy and suffering of Egyptian middle-class women, caught in a web outdated traditions.

A captivating story, at once simple and profound, describes the relationship between a blind boy and his loving grandfather as they travel through the desert in Daoud Aoulad-Syad’s layered road movie, ‘The Blue Lake’.

Shot over a year ago by students in a filmmaking workshop in Gaza, ‘Gazan Tales’ is a disarming snapshot of four men’s everyday lives, as they pass their days unaware of the disaster about to befall them