Yomeddine

Madison Premiere • narrative • Egypt,USA,Austria • 2018 • DCP • Arabic,with English subtitles • 96 MIN

Living in a leper colony adjacent to a garbage dump, Beshay (Rady Gama) makes a living selling salvaged trash out of his donkey-led cart. Abandoned at the colony when he was a child, Beshay decides to take the cart north to the City of Qena in order to seek out his birth family. By the time Beshay realizes that his young friend Obama (Ahmed Abdelhafiz) has stowed away in the cart, it is too late to turn around and return the boy to the orphanage he is running away from. On the road, the odd couple are met frequently with hostility, particularly from those who wrongly think Beshay’s leprosy is contagious. Beshay and Obama also find warm companionship from fellow outsiders, especially an unflappable legless former truck driver. This warm and affecting road/buddy movie marks the feature directorial debut for Egyptian writer-director A.B. Shawky. Yomeddine (Arabic for Judgment Day) so impressed the programmers of the Cannes Film Festival that they included it in the Festival’s main competition, a prestigious acknowledgment rare for debuting filmmakers. “A sweet, solid first feature marbled with genuinely touching moments…while Shawky ensures a firm sense of place, essential for any road movie, he maintains his focus on the characters themselves” (Jay Weissberg, Variety). (JH)