Part documentary, part fiction, this profound, elegiac picture is as trickily undefinable as its subject, the city of Cairo in the two years in the run-up to the Egyptian revolution in 2011. The film uses the device of a fictional film-maker grappling with a documentary portrait of his home city, a mercurial subject, as he struggles with more quotidian concerns such as the quest to find somewhere to live. Woven into the story are messages from friends – video missives from Berlin, Baghdad and Beirut – and documentary footage of the city.
It’s a work of gentle, swelling sadness that mourns a spirit of artistic and creative freedom quashed and it has become something of a cause celebre, since it was effectively banned in Egypt after being unceremoniously pulled from the Cairo international film festival last year.
