The distinctive vision that Omar El Zohairy brought to his two prize-wining shorts is much in evidence in his meticulously crafted absurdist feature debut Feathers. It’s amusing to imagine how he pitched the project at the start, given the narrative’s unlikely elements: a working-class man is turned into a chicken during a private magic show and his stoical wife is forced to cope with the ramifications. What’s more, the film has no scripted dialogue, uses non-professional actors, and is composed of fixed-camera shots. Yet Zohairy’s mastery of his elements, and the intriguing nature of the parable-like story, combine to make Feathers a memorable plunge into an off-kilter world. The film has a busy fest life ahead following its Grand Prize win in Cannes’ Semaine de la Critique, and sales have been strong with even a U.S. distribution deal through Grasshopper Film.
Those who follow Egypt’s tragic political situation will likely attempt to interpret the story’s surreal elements within the context of the present dictatorship, much as Iron Curtain-era directors used allegory as their only available critique, but “Feathers,” like the chicken itself, resists being confined to quarters. That’s not to say the film isn’t a form of protest: after all, it opens with a self-immolation that’s never referred to again. It’s also possible to suggest that the entire mise-en-scène, in which literally every surface is covered with a layer of grime, is representative of Egypt’s current state in the broadest sense.
A husband (Samy Bassiouny) and wife (Demyana Nassar) live with their three children in a dilapidated apartment next to the factory where he works. He’s brusque and officious, she’s quiet and fatalistic, long resigned to eking out a life of drudgery determined by the needs of her children and husband. During a birthday party for their four-year-old, the husband brings in a magician to entertain the motley guests, but something goes wrong and when the conjurer tries to produce him from a crate, the only thing inside is a white chicken. That’s bad news on multiple levels: they’re already behind on their rent, and she has no means of support. The police are obstructive, the factory won’t hire women, the one man offering to help wants other things, and their few household items are being repossessed.
The wife meets all these impossible hurdles with wearied resignation, her large eyes exhibiting a striking kinship to those of Robert Bresson’s Balthazar in the way they register each new slight and setback (Zohairy has acknowledged Bresson’s influence), yet she keeps seeking a way forward. She finds work cleaning the impossibly white, immaculate home of a rich couple, but is caught taking scraps of food and is summarily fired. Making ends meet while raising three kids and a chicken who used to be her husband is an increasingly intractable burden, not helped by a late unexpected turn of events.
Zohairy is no stranger to absurdist storytelling, as the title alone of his second short attests: The Aftermath of the Inauguration of the Public Toilet at Kilometre 375, and neither is his co-writer Ahmed Amer, co-writer on another human-into-animal film, Ali, the Goat and Ibrahim. Both men have an appreciation for the ways surreal humor intersects with life’s hardships, such as when the husband brings home a kitschy mini-fountain, or the matter-of-fact way the wife closes a window when the factory chimney belches out masses of smoke that threaten to engulf their living quarters. Feathers miraculously maintains this delicate balance, employing a straightforward tone even when it comes to the chicken, as if to say: these are life’s hardships, how can they be met and overcome?
Visually the film employs rigid pictorial framing in which interiors feel like a diorama bounded by dingy walls, where the characters appear trapped by more than just circumstances. Even bright birthday decorations quickly lose their splash of color in this begrimed monochrome, unrelieved by outdoor shots of a nondescript industrial nowhere-land. It’s an evocation of poverty in Egypt far less exaggerated than many outsiders might think, conveyed with respect for those struggling to simply survive. Zohairy’s use of music creates counterpoints of wishful optimism within the bleakness, such as the final song El Sobhiya by Al Massrieen, with its lyrics, “We will sing more and more for life and joy, let’s hug this day.”
Director: Omar El Zohairy
Screenplay: Ahmed Amer, Omar El Zohairy
Cast: Demyana Nassar, Samy Bassiouny, Fady Mina Fawzy, Abo Sefen Nabil Wesa, Mohamed Abd El Hady, Jana, Samia Said, Islam Abdallah, Naeem Abd El Malek, Ahmed Shabaan, Hassan El Roussy, Waheed Gashwa.
Producers: Juliette Lepoutre
Co-producers: Mohamed Hefzy, Shahinaz Al Akkad, Derk-Jan Warrink, Koji Nelissen, Giorgos Karnavas, Konstantinos Kontovrakis, Verona Meier.
Executive producer: Mohamed El Raie
Associate producers: Pierre Menahem, Daniel Ziskind
Cinematography: Kamal Samy
Production designer: Asem Ali
Costume designer: Heba Hosny
Editor: Hisham Saqr
Sound engineer: Ahmed Adnan
Production companies: Still Moving (France), Film Clinic, Lagoonie Film Production (Egypt), Keplerfilm (Netherlands), Heretic (Greece), Verona Meier.
World sales: Heretic Outreach
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Semaine de la Critique)
In Arabic
112 minutes
