43rd Cairo International Film Festival

12/01/2021

Festival Reviews

Far from the Nile

Far from the Nile

Cairo awarded its best documentary prize to this broadly appealing fly-on-the-wall documentary about a group of musicians from countries bordering the Nile who go on a demanding hundred-day-tour of the U.S.

Alam

Alam

Writer-director Firas Khoury refreshingly normalizes the lives of a group of Palestinian teens in Israel and then adds a political overlay in this notable debut that deserves more attention than accorded in Toronto.

Light Upon Light

Light Upon Light

Danish director and anthropologist Christian Suhr’s feature documentary offers a respectful yet compelling peek into the surprisingly diverse communities of Sufi worshippers within the Islamic tradition of Egypt.

Houria

Houria

Young actress Lyna Khoudri sparkles as an Algerian dance student forced to reorder her priorities after she is physically assaulted in an emotion-clad feminist drama directed by Mounia Meddour (‘Papicha’).

No Land’s Man

No Land’s Man

Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays a pathological liar whose romance with an Australian girl unveils a horrifying backstory of racism in Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s genre-bending pleaser.

Becoming

An omnibus of women-directed Saudi shorts that acts as a calling card for the diversity of rising talent in the Kingdom, offering five largely strong entries highlighting the ways women negotiate traditional female and non-female spaces.

The Stranger

The Stranger

Palestine’s 2022 Oscar submission is a brooding story of lives in limbo in the Golan Heights, stunningly shot and wrenching in its moving evocation of a man mired in self-loathing and paralyzed by the physical and existential no-man’s land resulting in the Israeli occupation and the disaster in Syria.

A Second Life

A Second Life

A well-calibrated debut with a fine central performance, weaving together notions of class and familial betrayal when an impoverished mother sells her son’s kidney to a well-off family in exchange for a better life.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow

In the bitter drama of a human rights lawyer struggling with mental illness, well-known actor Dhafer L’Abidine directs, produces and stars in a passionate plea to Tunisians to reclaim their revolution.

Daughters of Abdulrahman

Daughters of Abdulrahman

Predictably stereotyped characterizations still deliver some enjoyable moments in this female empowerment story that unfortunately also plays to the region’s homophobia but will be a crowd-pleaser in the Arab world.

Far from the Nile

Far from the Nile

Cairo awarded its best documentary prize to this broadly appealing fly-on-the-wall documentary about a group of musicians from countries bordering the Nile who go on a demanding hundred-day-tour of the U.S.

Alam

Alam

Writer-director Firas Khoury refreshingly normalizes the lives of a group of Palestinian teens in Israel and then adds a political overlay in this notable debut that deserves more attention than accorded in Toronto.

Light Upon Light

Light Upon Light

Danish director and anthropologist Christian Suhr’s feature documentary offers a respectful yet compelling peek into the surprisingly diverse communities of Sufi worshippers within the Islamic tradition of Egypt.

Houria

Houria

Young actress Lyna Khoudri sparkles as an Algerian dance student forced to reorder her priorities after she is physically assaulted in an emotion-clad feminist drama directed by Mounia Meddour (‘Papicha’).

No Land’s Man

No Land’s Man

Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays a pathological liar whose romance with an Australian girl unveils a horrifying backstory of racism in Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s genre-bending pleaser.

Awards Corner

Cairo

  • for
    The Hole in the Fence (Mexico, Poland)
    Director: Joaquin del Paso
  • for
    Tomorrow (Tunisia)
    Director: Dhafer L’Abidine
  • for
    Small Body (Italy, France, Slovenia)
    Director: Laura Samani
  • for
    Aloners (South Korea)
    Director: Hong Seong-eun
  • Award for
    A Chiara (Italy, France)
    Swamy Rotolo
  • Award for
    Abo Saddam (Egypt)
    Mohamed Mamdouh
  • for
    107 Mothers (Slovakia)
    Ivan Ostrochovsky & Peter Kerekes
  • Award for
    They Carry Death (Spain, Colombia)
    José Alayon
  • for
    Memory Box (Lebanon, France, Canada, Qatar)
    Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
  • for
    The Stranger (Palestine)
    Director: Ameer Fakher Eldin