Omar Hilal’s highly promising debut feature Voy! Voy! Voy! is being widely described as a ‘dark comedy’ and from an industry standpoint, it is. But one can look at it from a purely Egyptian perspective, in which Egyptians love to make jokes about their misfortunes, as a coping mechanism. Performing exceptionally well domestically and in the Gulf countries, the film presents a drop in the sea of commercial Egyptian cinema in recent years, attracting local audiences with its lower-class, witty-mouthed characters and a splash of drama. Yet in the end, Voy! Voy! Voy! addresses a serious topic that goes beyond comedy sketches, extravagant action, and hyper-nationalistic police and army thrillers.
The story begins with just another day in the life of Hassan (Mohamed Farrag), sitting in the local cafe sipping tea and puffin’ shisha while he describes how he almost married a 70-something British lady after hooking up with her to get a passport and travel. But unfortunately, she passed away with a heart attack. Such an intro says a lot about Hassan, who will stop at nothing to immigrate from his native Egypt.
In a working-class neighbourhood, Hassan and his buddies Edra (Amgad El-Haggar) and Saeed (Taha Desouky), most probably born in the early 1990s, all share the same storyline. Theirs is a lost generation, raised in the first two decades of the rule of neo-liberal autocrat Hosni Mubarak, but who gained an overdose of hope in the 2011 Arab Spring, only to have it crushed again as a result of corruption, radicalization, and the lack of free speech.
While Hassan survives on a minimum wage working as a security guard, Saeed works on tips from food delivery, and Edra runs an Internet café selling niche porn. Hilal’s storyline captures these characters somewhere around 2013, not caring about how they got there but more how far they are willing to go to change their reality and escape a dead-end life.
Hilal, a veteran at directing TV commercials, uses visuals and voiceover to build the plot, and by and by a new character emerges who provides the film’s voiceover in flashbacks. This is Coach Adel (Bayoumi Fouad), a middle-aged sports trainer in an unhappy marriage. He signs up for a low-paying gig training a blind soccer team composed exclusively of visually impaired players, hoping it will open the door to the big-league professional teams and much more money. It is a delight to see Fouad engaging with more serious scripts that bring out the complex actor he is.
The narrative of Voy! Voy! Voy! is a non-linear slow burn, in some moments completely surreal, feeding the Egyptian audience’s thirst for storylines that engage with the post-2013 political and economic reality which affects millions in Egypt. As poverty engulfs close to 30% of the population, according to recent government statistics, there is everyday talk about unorganized immigration schemes, going AWOL while travelling on a tourist visa, taking a boat from Libya and crossing the forests of the Polish-Hungarian borders. Hassan feels discouraged by offers of the most common and at times lethal immigration to Europe via the Mediterranean. Then, in a sequence brilliantly directed by Hilal, he crosses paths with non-seeing soccer, where he finds a chance to travel to the Blind Football World Cup in Poland.
Adel selects all three pals, Hassan, Edra, and Saeed, and they start training with the rest of the team. These scenes introduce the audience to the world of visually impaired football, where voy! is shouted on the pitch to announce that a player has the ball, altering the other players about their his/her position.
Eventually Adel discovers the trio’s plot, but instead of kicking them off the team, he makes a deal with them: he will look the other way while the they help him win the cup, before they abandon the team in Poland. The deal leads to continuous conning and scams as the team prepares to travel, where it’s every man, blind or not, is for himself. Observing and reporting on the team and the all male-plot is an enthusiastic female journalist (played by the popular actress Nelly Karim). She represents the upper middle class ,who judge illegal immigrants as lazy and taking short cuts, and it is not until the final acts of the film that her role emotionally intersects with the plot when she confronts Hassan and allows him to justify his con scheme: “What did I ever receive that I can give back? You know about my life, but never tasted its bitterness and humiliation,” he tells her, in the climactic moments of Farrag’s solid performance.
In its depiction of poverty, corruption, and frustration, Hilal’s film surpasses the usual melodramatic representations of post-2013 Middle Eastern cinema, giving the characters more agency without depriving them of being satirical, rebellious, and self-critical. As the young men rush to carry out their plot, Sary Hany’s music provides a light-hearted and passionate comment on the busy streets of Cairo, the dusty governmental offices, and the warm but sad lower-class houses, but also leaves room for joking and laughing about one’s misfortunes. This seriousness is far from the propaganda films currently popular in Egypt that point out how “unorganized immigration is bad”. Here Hilal’s ability as a filmmaker shines in the aesthetic and arthouse elements that should appeal to international audiences who may know nothing about contemporary Egypt, and to Western distributors looking for diverse, colourful stories.
The collaboration between Hilal and local production company Film Clinic marks another hit for producer and scriptwriter Mohamed Hefzy, who continues to scout and board projects whose local success can overflow abroad, as it did in Mohammed Diab’s Clash, Ahmed Abdallah’s Rags and Tatters, and Ayten Amin’s Villa 69.
Director, screenwriter: Omar Hilal
Cast: Mohamed Farrag, Nelly Karim, Bayoumi Fouad, Taha Desouky, Amgad El-Haggar, Passant Shawky, Mohamed Abdel-Azim, Hagag Abdel-Azim, Hanan Youssef, Lobna Wanas.
Producers: Mohamed Hefzy, Omar Hilal
Executive producer: Pierre Sarraf
Cinematography: Yves Sehnaoui
Production design: Sally El Shamy, Hussien Baydoun
Costume design: Omnia Aly
Editing: Ahmed Hafez
Music: Sary Hany
Production companies: Film Clinic, Vox Studios, Image Nation Abu Dhabi production
World sales: AGC Studios
In Arabic, English
109 minutes
