It took the Egyptian visual artist and filmmaker Hala Elkoussy eight years to complete her second feature film, East of Noon. A surreal and allegorical tale set in a timeless, fictional wasteland, the film follows Abdo, a 19-year-old intuitively able to play music as he confronts the weight of a crumbling autocracy and the imagination that both sustains and imprisons him.
The film, which had its world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, is populated by characters who are part myth, part memory. Among them are Jalala, an aging storyteller who spins fantastical tales of a sea no one has ever seen, and Shawki, a flamboyant showman whose authoritarian attitude is sugar-coated with spectacle and banter. Together, they embody the soft and hard edges of power, against which Abdo pushes back in search of something beyond.
For Elkoussy, the making of East of Noon was neither swift nor simple. She began developing the project in 2016, and started applying for grants two years later. It was, as she describes it, “a long and exhausting process of rejection, revision, and resilience.” The project was turned down repeatedly—from Cairo to Gouna to Doha. “I applied to AFAC five times without success,” she recalls. The breakthrough came only by chance, when the Doha Film Institute finally decided to support the film in post-production.
Although she spent several years in the Netherlands, where she became well-known as a visual artist, Elkoussy didn’t initially seek support from Dutch cinema funds. “I didn’t know how,” she says. “I didn’t even understand the system.” That changed when someone from the art world who had seen her first feature, Cactus Flower (2017), introduced her to a Dutch producer with a background straddling visual art and cinema. “She already knew my work, and we clicked.” The turning point came with the Verbeelding Grant — a rare fund awarded every two years to a single artist whose project combines experimental cinema and visual art. It’s co-funded by the Mondriaan Fund, a Dutch institution dedicated to visual art, and not affiliated with any state film body. Elkoussy applied in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, after waiting two years for the opportunity.
This kind of persistence, she insists, is what defines today’s independent filmmaking scene. “We know how limited support is,” she says, “but we also know what we want to say — and that nothing will stop us from saying it.” For her, and for peers like Khaled Mansour (Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo) and Bassam Mortada (Abo Zaabal 89), making films is an act of endurance, not privilege. “We’re not waiting for the ideal producer to rescue us. We chase the chance.”
That hunger to express something urgent is what fuelled East of Noon. “One of the core ideas was the need for intergenerational dialogue,” she explains. “We must speak to those who are younger than we are. They’re the present, and soon, we’ll just be the old people.” The idea is not abstract for her. “I have a son around the same age as Abdo. He’s on a path not unlike Abdo’s. I don’t always understand him, but I’ve learned to see the energy of his generation not as chaotic, but deeply vital.”
The film began, she says, with two parallel relationships. The first was her long-standing friendship with the veteran actress Menha Al-Batrawi, who plays Jalala. “She’s not a mother figure, exactly,” Elkoussy says, “but someone whose presence is mythical.” From that bond emerged the idea of a character who opens imaginary worlds to others — much like old radio dramas once did. “Someone told me once how, before television, they experienced stories entirely in their minds. I didn’t grow up with that. My generation had TV. But that concept — hearing only, and imagining the rest — that became the seed for Jalala.”
The second thread came from Elkoussy’s desire to build on her first film and her identity as a visual artist. “I didn’t come to cinema to make conventional drama,” she says. “Others are much better at that. I came to say something specific, and to experiment cinematically in ways I couldn’t in the visual arts.” She reunited with key collaborators—cinematographer Abdel-Salam Moussa, sound designer Abdel-Rahman Mahmoud, and composer Ahmed El-Sawy. “We all agreed this would be a challenge. Each of us had to do something we’d never done before.”
Those aesthetic choices reflect her experimental spirit. Set in a barter-based society stuck in an undefined time and place, the film toggles between black-and-white and color. “The world the characters inhabit is harsh and colourless, while the sea they dream of is full of colour,” she explains. “It’s never been seen, only imagined through stories. That’s why it had to be in colour.”
Visually, the black-and-white footage was shot on raw film, lending the frame a textured roughness. “Colour would’ve made the set feel too busy,” she notes. “The shop in the film is packed with objects. Black-and-white helped make the world feel coherent.” The sea, by contrast, symbolises freedom and imagination — a place never visited, yet alive in the minds of the characters.
As the script evolved over many drafts, the characters changed with it. “Jalala was originally written as an idealised figure — kind, inspirational, harmless,” Elkoussy says. “But I had to ask myself: Is that real? Is an artist automatically good just because they don’t harm anyone?” She began to question the role of the artist, and Jalala became more complex. “She’s both a source of inspiration and sedation. She opens the door to imagination, but she also keeps the boy locked inside it.”
That introspection extended to Elkoussy’s own role. “The film made me ask: Are we, as artists, really doing something meaningful? Or are we just offering comfort, symbolic and easy?” The character of Shawki, played by Ahmed Kamal, was added later to reflect the other side of power. “If Jalala is the soft force, Shawki is the harsh one,” she explains. “He acts where she doesn’t. He stops, he punishes.” The film, in this way, becomes a portrait of a polarised society.
For the role of Abdo, Elkoussy cast Omar Rozeik, whom she first met when he was 17 and grieving the loss of his father. “I waited a long time before deciding,” she says. “He was very young. But after many auditions, I came back to him.” For Nunna, she cast Fayza Shama, whom she discovered in a dance workshop. “Her face is unforgettable,” she says. The rehearsals were long and intense. “We lived in the office. We rehearsed performance, movement, and even spatial presence.” Shooting on film left no room for improvisation. “Every detail had to be tested before we shot. It was expensive. There was no margin for error.”
Elkoussy designed the production herself, as she does in all her films. “Every detail — from the actors’ faces to the background chair — was built with care,” she says. She spent months sourcing items from junkyards, sometimes even years. “Some props were my own personal things.” The set had to feel true, even if viewers couldn’t notice every detail. “It had to be felt.” The production team included applied arts students who designed elements to match the imagined world. “If anything felt out of place, it would break the illusion.” The film was initially meant to be shot in an abandoned factory in Al-Quseir, but the location was no longer available by the time she was ready. Elkoussy eventually found a replacement in Helwan. “We needed a space that looked like nowhere. A place outside of place.”
Elkoussy sees directing as a balancing act, especially as a woman. “It’s never easy for women in leadership. You have to think about your tone, your relationships, your authority — all while pursuing your artistic vision.” In time, she learned how to navigate these dynamics. “I’m lucky to work with people who believe in me, and in whom I believe. That trust is rare.”
She contrasts filmmaking with her background in fine arts. “Visual artists work in solitude. Filmmakers have to consider the audience. But I don’t believe the audience is one thing. People are more open than we think.” She doesn’t make films to shout or provoke. “That’s not me. I offer an experience. I give the audience something — and ask them to meet me halfway. I give pleasure. I ask for a chance.”
When East of Noon was finally finished, Elkoussy felt a sense of fulfillment. “I wanted to make a film that mattered, something heavy in the real sense — and I did,” she says. The journey was long and full of obstacles, from finance to logistics. “But we made it. And when we saw the reaction, we knew we’d left a mark.”
The selection at Cannes came as a surprise. “We didn’t have a French producer or distributor. But I submitted anyway. I wanted to knock on that door. And it opened.” Now, she’s already working on a new script. “I’m ready to start again.”
* A version of this article appears in print in the 24 April, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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