YOMEDDINE

Real-life leprosy survivor Rady Gamal leads this heartwarming road-trip comedy – the first full-length independent Egyptian film to vie for the Palme d’Or.

Handling its subject with sensitivity and empathy, Yomeddine marks the second time that writer/director Abu Bakr Shawky has examined the lives of those living with leprosy, following his 2009 short documentary The Colony – which led him to cross paths with his charismatic leading man.

Gamal plays the middle-aged Beshay, a junk-collecting Coptic man who was abandoned as a child, found love with a fellow colony-dweller and knows no other home. When his wife passes away, he decides to track down the family that left him decades earlier, taking to the road via donkey with his orphaned apprentice Obama by his side.

"Shawky’s breezy plot plays like a Middle Eastern answer to Italian neorealism, peering beyond the most obvious narratives to mine for the authentic representations of under-seen lives." – IndieWire