The International Ismailia Film Festival (IIFF) has earned a special place in the Egyptian film industry since its inaugural round in 1991. This, despite having a rocky history. IIFF was cancelled a good few times in the 1990s for different reasons. It was relaunched again in 2000, to be stopped again for two years due to the January Revolution of 2011, and once in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Independent film professionals, especially younger ones, consider this festival their own gathering point, a forum for new thoughts, experiments and arguments. Above all, IIFF affords an annual opportunity to see some of the world’s newest documentaries, animations, and short narrative films, showing all kinds of documentaries and short films. This year it was evident that the political dose is particularly high.
Morad Mostafa’s I Promise You Paradise (the Arabic title is Eissa) was one of the most interesting films to be screened in the Short Narrative Competition. Due to its participation in the Critics’ Week of the Cannes Film Festival last year, most of IIFF guests were interested in watching the 25-minute feature. The achievement of this film is in the unique flow of the narrative. The filmmaker follows the protagonist Eissa, a 17-year-old African immigrant in Cairo, as he gives his own child to a Christian priest from the Samaan Al-Kharraz Cave Church in Al-Mokattam Hills. The audience can figure out from the next few scenes that this child is the result of an illicit relationship with a young Egyptian girl.
It seems that the filmmaker was intrigued by the complexity of the forbidden relationship between an African migrant (evidently a Christian from South Sudan) and a Muslim Egyptian girl in hijab. In one scene she tells him, crying, to bring her the child back. The story moves forward as the protagonist retrieves the child and, together with the girl, journeys by motorbike to a coastal city where they plan to board a boat to Europe. However, the amount of money he has doesn’t meet the human trafficker’s demands and Eissa is forced to leave his girlfriend and the child to their fate in the sea while he stays in Egypt. The controversial story is told in glimpses rather than complete scenes, inviting the audience to fill in the gaps.
This year marked a few important films dealing with the Palestinian cause, but most were made before the recent Israeli war on Gaza. One, Mar Mama, directed by Majdi El-Omari and screened in the Short Narrative Competition, is a 15-minute film set in a single location, the house in a village in the West Bank. It shows a little girl playing with her father (Ziad Bakri), and the dialogue reveals the trauma the girl has suffered since her mother was killed by the Israeli occupation forces. The father is trying to cure his daughter by making her think of something else, so he builds a doll’s house and tries to make a stop motion film about Mar Guirguis (St George) fighting the dragon. The significance of the story of the saint who fights a monster is clear. But the film ends in tragedy when the Israeli forces break into the house and the girl’s worst fears come true.
Another aspect of the suffering of the Palestinians is the short documentary Ayoub directed by Ajwad Abd Jeradat. The 24-minute film screened in the Short Documentary Competition depicts a day in the life of three brothers, Ayoub, Yahia and Zakaria, who live with their father in what seems to be a caravan in a remote area, tending a flock of sheep. In the first few scenes they wake up and ride donkeys through rugged land near Israeli settlements. The filmmaker shows us not only the hardship that the brothers suffer on their way to school but also the difficulties faced by the teachers since the Israeli authorities want to demolish the school. The teachers continue with their lessons outdoors in a tent, insisting on living up to their duty against all odds. In a funny but compelling scene, the teacher asks the students what their favourite animal is, and everyone answers differently but when it is Ayoub’s turn, he says he likes the donkey, and is surprised when his colleagues laugh.
One very remarkable film screened in the Long Documentary Competition is the 66-minute After the Bridge by Davide Rizzo and Marzia Toscano. It is about an Italian woman, Valeria Collina (also known as Khadija), who faces unbearable tragedy when she finds out that her son Youssef was one of the three men who committed the 2017 London Bridge vehicle-ramming and stabbing attack and were killed by the police. Having married a Moroccan and converted to Islam, the woman was divorced and returned with her son Youssef to Bologna. The film opens with a close-up of her face in hijab as she tells the audience part of her story. The filmmakers follow her through Bologna, where urban and natural beauty abound, as the news reaches her, delving into her deepest feelings of agony, loneliness and disbelief. It also features her trip to Morocco to see her son’s burial place, which has no tombstone.
The film is about both grief and guilt, with Valeria feeling responsible for her son adopting the jihadi ideology. However, what seemed most important in this film is the older footage that Valeria gives the filmmakers and how they weave this material into their film showing. These images show her early life, when she was a free spirit laughing and dancing, a far cry from the bitter old lady in hijab she is now. One scene shows her talking to the camera, expressing the confusion she feels about her identity, whether she is Valeria or Khadija. In two shots, she does not wear her hijab, as if an identity crisis erupted following the London attacks. The film also shows a recent scene in which she is involved in a theatrical story-telling performance before an audience, with art performing a positive, necessary role in her life again.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 29 February, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: