A transformation is afoot in Egyptian filmmaker Morad Mostafa’s Aisha Can’t Fly Away [+leggi anche:
intervista: Morad Mostafa
scheda film], his eagerly awaited feature debut that has collected a series of coveted awards along the way to its Cannes world premiere in Un Certain Regard. The project picked up major prizes at Cinemed meetings, Venice Final Cut and Marrakech’s Atlas Workshops, and was also developed at Cannes’ La Résidence du Festival in 2023. Now, the movie is the first Egyptian entry in the section since Mohamed Diab’s Clash [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] in 2016, whereas Mostafa last trod the Croisette with his 2017 short film I Promise You Paradise.

Buliana Simon takes on the title role of a Sudanese immigrant in the Cairo neighbourhood of Ain Shams, where she makes a meagre living working as a caregiver for the elderly in their own homes. She is friends with a local chef, Abdoun (Emad Ghoniem), who generously feeds her, but she’s plagued by the sheer horror of circumstance. One of the men she cares for, Mr Khalil (Mamdouh Saleh), is demanding and sexually coercive, while she is also made to work for gang leader Zuka (Egyptian rapper Ziad Zaza) by collecting keys so they can steal from people’s homes.

In the vein of last year’s Cannes ACID entry Mi Bestia [+leggi anche:
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Mostafa revels in a visually slick, conventionally “festival-cinematic” style lensed by The Village Next to Paradise [+leggi anche:
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The filmmaker acutely captures the peril of the migrant plight, but he struggles to convince us to empathise beyond cultivating in the viewer a sense of distress. We’re encouraged to develop a sense of disgust at some of the ultimately very gruesome acts that Aisha is made to partake in, but without more crucial pieces of character context in the writing itself, we can only watch in horror. Nonetheless, Mostafa has made it clear that he can deliver a visually satisfying result – even at the expense of creative risk.

Aisha Can’t Fly Away is a production by Bonanza Films (Egypt), in co-production with Nomadis Images (Tunisia), Shift Studios (Egypt), A.A. Films (Egypt), Cinewaves (Saudi Arabia), MAD Solutions (Egypt), Mayana Films (Germany), Coorigines (France), Arabia Pictures (Saudi Arabia) and Station Films (Sudan). Its world sales are managed by MAD Solutions subsidiary MAD World.