In the past couple of years, a number of unique commercial releases have shown potential following several years of formulaic action fare. They include Wesh fi Wesh (Face to Face, 2023), a comedy directed by Waleed Al-Halafawi and featuring Amina Khalil, Mohamed Mamdouh and a number of other stars.
It takes on numerous challenges that it manages to overcome intelligently, and is sent entirely in a single location: the apartment of a married couple on the verge of divorce following a fight in the presence of both their families and two or three of their friends.
Another comedy with the same approach was X Merati (My Wife’s Ex), directed by Moataz Al-Touni, also starring Amina Khalil and Mohamed Mamdouh, this time with Hisham Maged. It centres on an upper class and diffident psychiatrist, Youssef (Hisham Maged) and his inmate patient at the prison, Taha (Mohamed Mamdouh), a dangerous criminal who turns out to have been the ex-husband of his wife Sahar (Amina Khalil) and the father of the child Youssef is bringing up with her...
By the end of 2024, Al-Hawa Sultan (Love is King) — the first romantic film commercial cinema had had to offer in a long time, directed by Heba Youssry and starring Ahmed Dawoud and Menna Shalabi – polarised audience and critics. Despite serious criticisms and mixed reviews, it seems to have reopened the horizons of commercial Egyptian cinema to the genre.
6 Days – Karim Shaaban’s directorial debut – opens with a traditional romantic story between a teenage boy and girl in 2006. Youssef and Alia spend a pleasant day together towards the end of term before the exams, addressing the fact that Alia’s mother has decided to separate from her husband and move to her brothers’ house taking Alia to a different neighbourhood; the young paramours part ways without further notice and no hope of a reunion.
The action fast forwards seven years, when they meet again by chance. Youssef (Ahmed Malek) is about to graduate from the Faculty of Medicine while Alia (Aya Samaha) is a waitress at a restaurant. Youssef tells her he wants to wait for her shift to end so that he can spend some time together, and so they walk and eat and catch up for the rest of the day. In that time she tells him she is engaged to her cousin, and he realises this is the date of their last meeting, December 19. Alia suggests they get together on that day every year.
6 Days also recalled a Korean film I saw a year ago, Past Lives by Celine Song, featuring Nora and Hae Sung as childhood friends who drift apart when Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea, only to be reunited for a week during which they confess their love for each other many years later. The film moves from one meeting to the next with every meeting given a date and a title to describe the sentiment, sometimes skipping a year or two without them meeting at all. Each meeting reveals changes in each of their lives that suggests they might come closer together, but each time an obstacle arises to drive them further apart.
The screenplay by Wael Hamdi manages to paint a convincing picture of the characters in a very realistic way, with minor side scenes like Alia’s mother at the hospital or the death of Youssef’s father contributing to a rounded portrait of each. The film relies mainly on dialogue from the very early scenes till the end, a tricky and brave approach that could have resulted in monotony and boredom. By taking place only through their meetings, excluding everything else, it actually manages to be gripping despite some unnecessary and unrealistic coincidences. One emerges with a sense of the world in which only they exist – nothing else.
The film moves forward till the moment when Alia confronts Youssef about how she wished he would respond to what she told him about her life in past meetings: her engagement, breaking it off the engagement, her abusive husband... Each time she wanted him to step in and ask to be with her, but he didn’t. That confrontation was a vindication of all their previous meetings and a demonstration of interpersonal expectations and how they work. After all those confessions, Youssef’s wedding ring appeared on screen and she knew he was married.
The ending is hopeful and predictable, and also based on coincidence, which the screenplay overuses, though this does not make the film any less remarkable. Its dialogue is different from any other film made in recent years, and it shows the complexity of the characters, their families, their dreams and their fears of society and of one another. It is also very smoothly paced as it builds up its characters one step at a time.
This could be Ahmed Malek’s most heartfelt performance to date, and his collaboration with Shaaban is clearly different from most of his previous roles. This time he enunciates clearly where he had always mumbled, his approach develops to reflect the evolution of his character each time he meets with Alia, and his facial expressions are masterly. I feel Aya Samaha’s performance lags behind a little though, in her first leading role, she demonstrates ample talent and intensity.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 27 February, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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