Industrialisation, Parenthood, Immigration, and Other Affairs

Industrialization, Parenthood, Immigration, and Other Affairs: Common Themes in the 46^th Cairo International Film Festival Films

The Cairo International Film Festival holds a special place in the Middle East as the only festival in the region accredited as Category A by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF). It is the region’s oldest festival, and its history has always been linked to reflecting the current moment, both artistically and in social and political discourse.

This film festival takes place in a giant city inhabited by more than 25 million people, where its guests and audience move through crowds and noise that hardly ever cease around the clock. In such an atmosphere, cinema inevitably becomes a physical practice, where films are analyzed primarily through their relation to prominent contemporary issues and the ideas and concerns shared by filmmakers worldwide.

The international competition of the 46th edition, evaluated by the FIPRESCI jury, included 14 feature films varying in their countries of origin, genres, narrative and directorial choices, and naturally, their quality. Yet this diversity did not prevent the recognition of recurring elements and themes appearing in several films that consciously or unconsciously express a spectrum of ideas present in the minds of contemporary artists.

Industry and environment

The world is rushing wildly towards the dominance of artificial intelligence over all production processes, at a speed that seems indifferent to those living by past rules: the workers in factories who shaped much of the 20th century defending their rights, only to be disregarded by the next century. Factory and manual labor environments appeared in multiple films. In Exile, by Tunisian director Mehdi Hmili, the drama begins with an accident that kills a worker in an old steel factory, prompting the deceased’s colleague to start an investigation to find who is responsible, which leads the story from drama into the territory of genre.

The nightmarish atmosphere of the steel factory closely resembles that of the glass factory depicted in Sand City (Balur nogorite), by Bangladeshi director Mahde Hasan, which follows a man and a woman living in Dhaka. The man works in the glass factory and secretly steals sand from it, hoping to establish his own business using this raw material. Sand is a recurring motif linking the two never-meeting storylines, symbolizing the harsh living conditions of one of the world’s most polluted cities.

Factories and pollution appear a third time in the Turkish film As We Breathe (Aldigimiz Nefes), the debut feature by Şeyhmus Altun. This film also starts with an explosion, this time in a factory in an Anatolian town, which releases toxic smoke and forces everyone to evacuate, specifically a father living alone with his children—including a smart, silent girl who watches her rapidly-changing world as her childhood draws to a close.

Parents and Sons

If fear of technological impact on human life (both new and lingering from the past) is pervasive, the father-son relationship amid a complicated world also emerged as a prominent theme in several competition films. This appears positively, with the father’s effort to connect with his children in As We Breathe, or a son rescuing his mentally unstable father in the Spanish film A Son (Un hijo) by director Nacho La Casa, or negatively, in the toxic relationship between a son and his father in the FIPRESCI award-winning film The Things You Kill by director Alireza Khatami.

In the latter, a complicated relationship links the protagonist to his abusive father, whom he suspects is responsible for his mother’s death, leading him to escalate matters in his own way. It is yet another that film begins by establishing a narrative premise in its first half, then shifts into a crime-supernatural hybrid in the second, where Khatami’s bold choice in casting greatly impressed the critics’ jury.

The negative presence is not limited to parents towards sons but also flows in reverse in two other films, where the presence of children disrupts the fragile balance formed by their parents. The first is Dragonfly by British director Paul Andrew Williams, winner of the Golden Pyramid, the festival’s top prize. In this film, an unexpected friendship develops between a retired elderly woman and her troubled neighbor. Despite initial suspicion, the neighbor finds solace in this quasi-paternal friendship, which is undermined by the sudden appearance of the elderly woman’s son, who disrupts the situation with a rash decision driven by judgments and stereotypes, changing the film’s atmosphere—a third significant shift in the competition line-up.

The second title features a less violent upheaval: its protagonist, a Spanish mother, continues living in Tangier despite her children’s migration. Calle Malaga, directed by Maryam Touzani, depicts her surprise when her daughter informs her that she sold their Tangier house and that the mother must move back to her homeland. The playful woman embarks on an adventure that leads her to a late love helping her rediscover life.

Immigration and Homecoming

Immigration is a naturally recurring concern in any festival, and it appeared in several Cairo competition films, portraying migration either abroad or back home. The Belgian film The Silent Run (L’enfant bélier), by director Marta Bergman, follows a couple of Arab immigrants who arrive illegally in Belgium, while in Renovation, by Lithuanian Gabrielė Urbonaitė, a friendship blooms between a translator and a Ukrainian immigrant working on renovating the neighborhood into which she’s recently moved.

Reverse immigration appears in the Maltese film Zafzifa by director Peter Sant, whose protagonist returns to Malta burdened with professional and family failure after years abroad. Meanwhile, one character in the documentary One More Show by Mai Saad and Ahmed Eldanaf is a young man who leaves Germany and returns to his family in Gaza, where he and his friends find themselves amid one of the world’s cruelest wars, trying to bring smiles to war-stricken children through a traveling circus show.

All the above concerns and more represent images of contemporary global crises and their worries in the long-standing Cairo Festival, which necessarily stands as a cultural, social, and political platform expressing the current mood of the moment every year.

By Ahmed Shawky

Edited by Robert Horton

© FIPRESCI 2025