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Drawing from a real-life celebrity murder, detective thrills and Egyptian Revolution chills intertwine in this year's Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize (World Cinema: Dramatic) winner
Crime doesn't discriminate. It stalks the streets of Cairo just like anywhere else, and it plagues corrupt cop Noredin Mustafa, both in his hefty case load and his shady extra-curricular activities. When he's tasked with investigating the death of a singer found in the Nile Hilton, he's soon following the many clues that lead from the city's underworld to its halls of power.
In his third feature, Tarik Saleh (Metropia, MIFF 2009) crafts a gritty film noir that's made all the more urgent by its setting, while proudly embracing its genre confines. Here, historical realities and gumshoe staples combine in a gripping, grimy exploration of societal dysfunction on several levels, spanning political unrest, immigration and law and order.
'Represents the type of penetrating filmmaking that only a writer-director intimately familiar with Egyptian culture but possessing an outsider's perspective could convincingly accomplish.' – The Hollywood Reporter
