When all the men vanish chasing foreign dreams, desire and chaos ferment in a village of date wine and ancient secrets.
Set in a mythical small Upper-Egyptian village where people live off planting dates and making of Date Wine, a stranger arrives and calls on people to travel to the abroad for job opportunities, all of the village's grown-up men leave, except for the disabled grandfather and his grandson Ahmed, upon which trouble begins to spread in the village in the absence of men along with his lover Salma. Exploring themes of Rebellion, Desire, Masculinity, Patriarchy, Spirituality and the Ancient Egyptian Mystique.
Cinematography
Dreamlike desert imagery that feels excavated from ancestral memory
Acting
Sherihan's smoldering, wordless command of every frame she enters
Direction
Kashef's patient, almost archaeological unearthing of village rhythms
Director
Radwan El Kashef
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Sherihan was Egypt's biggest musical star; her casting as a dramatic femme fatale was deliberately transgressive.
The film's 1998 release coincided with mass Egyptian labor migration to Gulf states, making its 'abroad' fantasy painfully contemporary.
EG
