Despite Ramadan being the year’s most hyped-up and spent-on TV season, more recently television drama released at other times outside traditional channels – on the Shahid VIP platform, for instance – has often proved of higher quality.
Those include Fi Kol Esbou Youm Gomaa (Every Week has a Friday, 2020), an adaptation of an Ibrahim Abdel-Meguid novelstarring Asser Yassin and Menna Shalabi, directed by Mohamed Shakir Khodier, and film auteur Yousry Nasrallah’s Menawara bi Ahlaha (Welcome Home), starring Mohamed Hatem, Bassem Samra, Laila Elwi, Ghada Adel and Nahed Al-Sebai and written by Mohamed Amin Rady.
One critically acclaimed Shahid VIP production that is definitely worth seeing is Wesh wi Dahr (Front and Back), directed by Mariam Abu-Ouf, and co-written by Ahmed Badawi and Shady Abdallah in the framework of Mariam Naoum’s Sard workshop. It is the story of Gamal (who becomes Galal) Farahat (Eyad Nassar), a middle-aged pharmaceutical company employee who in the course of his career has accumulated a huge amount of knowledge about medicine and exposed a company scam involving another company employee also named Gamal. The script effortlessly reveals Gamal’s personality, his remarkable intelligence, and his family life.
When Gamal misses the company bus and ends up hitchhiking in the desert, a car stops and the driver asks if it is Gamal, and when says yes the driver hands him a plastic bag with a huge sum of money. Taking the money, he wonders whether to take it to his wife Maysa (Fadwa Abed), who will see him in a much more positive light as a result, or use it to carry out his as yet unknown plan. While this happens we are introduced to Doha (Riham Abdel-Ghaffour), a young woman who works at a sweets factory near Al-Sayed Al-Badawi Mosque in the city of Tanta. She and her friend and colleague Heba (Tharaa Gobeil) eventually yield to the wedding organiser Abdo Warda (Islam Ibrahim), who wants to employ them as dancers.
Gamal is then seen in a microbus on the road. He asks where it is heading and is told Tanta. On arrival Gamal changes his name to Galal and, pretending to be a doctor, starts a private medical practice. Through a Salafi man named Abul-Baraa (Mohamed Mansour) – who, when he interferes in Doha and Heba’s affairs by asking why they come home so late, is told they work as nurses – Galal the fake doctor employs Doha the fake nurse at his clinic. At one, powerful point Galal’s connection with a famous Cairo doctor named Galal (Mahmoud Kabil) explains why he chose that name.
The well-paced, 10-episode show follows the development of Galal and Doha as they fall in love, showing an accurate, nuanced view of present-day Egyptian society in the process. The dialogue captures the spirit of the characters, especially in the initial scenes between Galal and Doha when they are not on good terms, and the script provides an excellent segue into how their relationship changes.
Director Mariam Abu-Ouf manages to capture the relevant picture for every scene. They way she films the streets of Tanta when Galal first sets foot there, for example, showing Tanta’s trademark sweets shops, generates exactly the right atmosphere for the story. Nor is the story of Doha’s friend Heba ignored. She continues to work as a wedding dancer, and is pregnant by her boyfriend Abdo Warda, a wannabe shaabi music DJ who uses the songs of the late singer Warda (hence the name).
Galal becomes so successful as a doctor that he appears on social media, and his wife Maysa traces the video in which she recognises him till she manages to locate him, taking him to court right after he marries Doha.
The ending is as convincing as every other aspect of the show: Galal is finally exposed, and the documents he faked to prove he was a qualified doctor with the help of his artist friend Sherif Al-Dessouki are exposed. The screenplay brilliantly sets up and exploits his mistakes.
The drama brings to mind filmmaker Mohamed Khan’s realism, while Abu-Ouf benefits from excellent acting performances by Nassar, Abdel-Ghaffour, Gobeil and Ibrahim who in turn make use of appropriate sets and costume – all plausible and believable.
Mariam Abu-Ouf is a young Egyptian director, the daughter of the late actor and artist Ezzat Abu-Ouf. She studied political science in Egypt and filmmaking in England. Her debut was a short film, Taxi, that tells the story of a female taxi driver in Cairo.
She worked as an assistant to director like Kamla Abu-Zekry on the television series Wahet Al-Ghoroub (Sunset Oasis, 2017) and Sherif Arafa on the film 18 Youm (18 Days, 2011). She started directing episodes in the TV series Lahazat Harega (Critical Moments, 2007), making her own series Hala wel Mestakhaby (Hala and the Unknown), starring Laila Elwi, in 2009.
In 2011 she directed her first feature film Bibo wi Beshir (Bibo and Beshir), starring Menna Shalabi and Asser Yassin.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 1 September, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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