Arabic

Quote:
My Wife and the Dog is widely regarded as a landmark film, one that broke with established conventions of style and proposed a new approach to narrative structure and visual language. Painter and filmmaker Marzouk’s first fiction feature tells the story of a newlywed lighthouse attendant who leaves his wife behind on the mainland for months. In his solitude, memories of adulterous adventures from his bachelorhood obsess him to the point that he begins to suspect his wife. Evocative imagery and compelling performances from a cast of iconic Egyptian stars—including Soad Hosni, Mahmud Mursi, and Nour El-Sherif—lend the film a sweeping, emotional charge.Read More »

PLOT: A passive mother who dedicates her life to her husband and children. Stuck in daily, repetitive, mundane chores, she has made herself as little as she possibly could. When a magic trick goes wrong at her 4-year-old son’s birthday party, an avalanche of coincidental absurdities befalls the family. The magician turns her husband, the authoritarian father, into a chicken. The mother is now forced to come to the fore and take care of the family while moving heaven and earth to bring her husband back. As she tries to survive, she goes through a rough and absurd transformation.Read More »

Quote:
A middle-aged tailor and his wife find their relationship turned upside down by the arrival of a handsome new apprentice.Read More »

Synopsis:
Two childhood friends, Adil and Karim, try to make a living as small-time crooks on the streets of modern day Casablanca. But when both men decide to make a better life for themselves, they are hired by a local mobster to perform one last job to earn their ticket out of Casablanca, and their friendship faces the ultimate test. Casanegra is an ode to the hopes of a city and a generation.

Awards: 10 wins and Morocco’s official submission to 82nd Academy Award’s Foreign Language in 2010.Read More »

In the depths of loneliness and despair, beautiful Aida visits her “tailor,” Victoria, a woman who runs a sensual house where erotic fantasies are fulfilled. After satisfying her desires in the arms of one of Victoria’s young men, Aida has a haunting nightmare where she envisions herself as a witch who, during a full moon, has the power to destroy her lovers’ sensitivity. This disturbing dream sends Aida into a downward spiral of self-destruction. When Aida finally loses her will to live and all hope for salvation, she longs to purify herself and find forgiveness for her sins. Reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and the stylishly erotic films of Radley Metzger, The Lady of the Black Moons emerged from an era of relaxed censorship in Egypt.Read More »

Quote:
In this film, Marrakech is filled with music, from women singing, dancing and drumming in their homes, to shopkeepers in the old market of Jamaa El-Fna, leaving their shops to follow groups of musicians through the allies of the old city.Read More »

PLOT: A team of filmmakers in search of a theme asks young residents of Casablanca about their expectations and their relationship to Moroccan cinema. When they witness a crime committed by an unsatisfied dock worker who accidentally kills his boss, they are interested in this particular case. The investigation of the motifs will encourage them to rethink their conception of cinema and the role of the artist in society.Read More »

A double wedding in a small village turns to high drama when one bride runs away and the other refuses to go on with her marriage. The drama unveils the fragile balance holding together a family strained by an abusive father now replaced by the successful but corrupt eldest son, a pathologically enraged second son, and the troubles of the youngest son, rendered deaf by a violent blow his father dealt him as a child. Ultimately tragic, the film is rife with biting humor and sharp political critique as it exposes how the violence of arbitrary and absolute power in a patriarchal society seeps into the unit of a family. Stars in Broad Daylight, Ousama Mohammad’s first long feature, remains banned from screening in Syria because of its subversive representation and critical voice. Selected at the «Quinzaine des Réalisateurs» at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988.Read More »

Arguably the best film of the Egyptian neorealist school of the eighties, exemplified by Daoud Abd El-Sayed, Khairy Bishara, and Mohamed Khan. depicting the devastating effects of global trade on the simple lives on the inhabitants.
Directed by Atef El-Tayeb, one of the boldest names in Egyptian cinema, who died prematurely and worked on the issues concerning the poor and the voiceless throughout his short but important career.Read More »