Samir Farid packs his bags in anger Only two out of six winners at the Cannes Film Festival deserved it: Michael Haneke's second Palme d'Or for the French film Amour (Haneke won the 2009 Palme d'Or for The White Ribbon); and the Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt, for which Mads Mikkelsen received the Best Actor award. The jury's decisions were as disappointing as the 22-film competition programme was promising. In the light of this it may be worth looking at the Egyptian contribution, Youssry Nassrallah's After the Battle, which deserved the jury prize at least. *** The young critic-cum student activist-cum modernist intellectual Youssry Nassrallah, who was the pride and joy of my �ê" older, 1960s generation �ê" as a critic in the 1970s and as a director in the 1980s, is now 60 years old. And he has managed to maintain a presence for Egyptian film in the greatest of all festivals (following the footsteps of golden-age directors of the 1950s: Salah Abu Seif, Kamal El-Sheikh, Youssef Chahine and Barakat). Maturity does not necessarily depend on age, but a high level of maturity is certainly what Nassrallah achieves in his new film �ê" the seventh in 25 years. He is among those directors who will not stand behind the camera without deep intellectual motives regardless of the number of films they produce. Indeed each film by Nassrallah is a new experiment in form �ê" even if they all express the realm of an auteur in every sense of the term. It is a world that makes no distinction between "the big issues" and the individuals who experience them; in other words it is relations between people that constitute the biggest issue of all. In After the Battle the big issue is the 25 January 2011 revolution, but the film deals with it through the complex relations of a number of characters. The fact that the film's topic is ongoing in reality is irrelevant, for there are many mawkish films that dealt with historical events at the proper remove, many years after they occurred. On the other hand the 18 days from 25 January to 11 February formed a complete episode in themselves, expressing the Egyptian people's desire for freedom and that people's moral resources, especially its unique view of what is common to all religions. As to when and how the revolution's aims will be achieved, that is a separate issue dependent on all manner of political calculations in Egypt, the Arab world and beyond. The film focuses even further, depicting the Egyptian revolution through a single episode within it: the Battle of the Camel in Tahrir Square on 2 February, the objective correlative of the revolution since the regime had decided to confront the high-tech, information-technology instruments of the young revolutionaries with the prehistoric implements of the Middle Ages: horses, camels and swords. The film opens with the Battle of the Camel and ends with the Maspero massacre of 9 October 2011: two counterrevolutionary reactions to the cry for freedom. The choice of Maspero relates to the fact that, of all the counterrevolutionary blows the revolution received after it triumphed with the stepping down of Mubarak, it was the riskiest in terms of targeting the national unity of Muslims and Christians in Egypt �ê" even if the film does not express this sufficiently. What is underlined is how the Copts disobeyed their patriarch after all Egyptians disobeyed theirs. The film does not deal with who organised each battle as such, eschewing questions of accountability. It sticks with the effects of the episode on the lives of its characters, who represent various classes in brilliant dramatic style. The main character, Mahmoud (Bassem Samra), is not among the heroes of the revolution but rather one of those who attacked the revolutionaries in the Battle of the Camel �ê" those residents of the village of Nazlet Al-Samman near the Pyramids who work in the service of tourists, providing horse and camel rides. The brilliance of the drama is the entirely convincing way in which Mahmoud is transformed from a miserable horse keeper who is filmed attacking revolutionaries in Tahrir Square �ê" with the result that his sons become the laughing stock of their schoolmates �ê" to a martyr of the revolution who dies defending Coptic demonstrators in Maspero. The transformation takes place through Reem (Menna Shalaby), the rich revolutionary divorcee who works in an advertising agency and is introduced to Mahmoud when she visits Nazlet Al-Samman with her friend Donia (Fedre), who works in animal care, in an attempt to save the horses and camels from starvation due to the lack of tourism. Though she knows about him participating in the Battle of the Camel, Reem cannot resist Mahmoud as a woman; when she is introduced to his wife Fatma (Nahed El-Sabaie) and two sons, indeed, she becomes part of the small family. It is then that she begins to see the other side of society, realising that even the Camel marauders too were victims of the regime. Reem is divided between Mahmoud and her ex-husband, which is contrasted with the power and clarity of Fatma's who at the beginning tells her she only cares about raising her children even if that means letting Reem marry Mahmoud and at the end tells her that she knew about their affair since the start. The ending of the film is among the most brilliant in Egyptian film history, recalling the ending of Chahine's masterpiece Al-Ard (The Land, in which the policeman drags the fellah across the field until the fellah dies, his blood mixing with the mud): in After the Battle, Mahmoud remembers racing his peers up the Great Pyramid and as he dies he sees himself going up the pyramid with confidence and persistence, step by step, while we hear only his last breaths. He keeps going up until the very top. Amour AWARDS Feature films Palme d'Or AMOUR (LOVE) directed by Michael HANEKE Grand Prix REALITY directed by Matteo GARRONE Award for Best Director Carlos REYGADAS for POST TENEBRAS LUX Award for Best Screenplay Cristian MUNGIU for DUP�E DEALURI (BEYOND THE HILLS) Award for Best Actress Cristina FLUTUR in DUP�E DEALURI (BEYOND THE HILLS) directed by Cristian MUNGIU Cosmina STRATAN in DUP�E DEALURI (BEYOND THE HILLS) directed by Cristian MUNGIU Award for Best Actor Mads MIKKELSEN in JAGTEN (THE HUNT) directed by Thomas VINTERBERG Jury Prize THE ANGELS' SHARE directed by Ken LOACH Short Films Palme d'Or - Short Film SESSIZ-BE DENG (SILENT) directed by L.Rezan YESILBAS Un Certain Regard Special Distinction DJECA (CHILDREN OF SARAJEVO) directed by Aida BEGIC Un Certain Regard Award for Best Actress �ê PERDRE LA RAISON played by Emilie DEQUENNE LAURENCE ANYWAYS played by Suzanne CL�âMENT Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize LE GRAND SOIR directed by Gustave KERVERN, Beno��t DEL�âPINE Prize of Un Certain Regard DESPU�âS DE LUCIA directed by Michel FRANCO 1st Prize Cin��fondation DOROGA NA (THE ROAD TO) directed by Taisia IGUMENTSEVA 2nd Prize - Cin��fondation ABIGAIL directed by Matthew James REILLY 3rd Prize Cin��fondation LOS ANFITRIONES (THE HOSTS) directed by Miguel Angel MOULET Cam��ra d'or BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD directed by Benh ZEITLIN
