In Egypt most cinema goers today are only able to see commercial films, either Egyptian or American; they are deprived of every other kind. Yet until the mid-1980s all manner of films were often available as well. In an ordinary downtown movie theatre, you could see a Fellini or a Tarkovsky, but it seems something changed in the mentality of distributors. No longer was there any presence of world cinema, with only random exceptions like the 1994 Il Postino, which had garnered enough Oscars to justify the risk. For a few years now the director-producer Marianne Khoury has been trying hard to bring back world cinema to the Egyptian viewer. Her efforts paid off in the case of the European Film Panorama, six rounds of which have been held. But when she tried to hold year-round screenings at a City Stars Mall theatre, the experiment proved short-lived; and she concluded that world cinema is not popular enough among mall goers. This time Khoury is supporting and supervising a group of young people screening world cinema on one of the Odeon Cinema screens downtown, which they named Zawya or “Angle”, trying to capitalise on the cultural energy of central Cairo and succeeding enough to make the venture viable. The week before last Zawya saw the screening of the 2012 Saudi film Wajda by Haifaa Al-Mansour, a realist film shown at the Venice and Dubai festivals on release to the acclaim of many Arab critics. Made by a Saudi woman and filmed entirely on the streets of Riyad, otherwise known as the capital of Wahhabism, the film suggests that Saudi Arabia may be on its way to gradually shedding its Wahhabi cloak and interacting with world culture. Wajda (Waad Mohamed) is a 12-year-old girl whose life's dream is to obtain a bicycle with which to race her male friend who tells her she could never have a bicycle like his since she is a girl. The script presents the character through her efforts to save the money with which to buy the bicycle, making bracelets in the colours of the Saudi football teams to sell to fellow school girls yet failing to collect the price of the green bicycle she has seen in a shop window. In the course of this the film presents social issues in the school community: the strict moral code imposed by the teachers, up to and including the punishment of an older girl who uses Wajda to send a message to her boyfriend (whom she can never meet in person) — a further opportunity for Wajda to obtain some money — or that of two girls who were caught applying nail polish and accused of homosexuality. Such details, while remaining integral to the dramatic line, make up a powerful and unprecedented audiovisual comment on Saudi society. This is paralleled by a somewhat weaker dramatic line delineating the domestic problems of Wajda's parents, with the father under the influence of his own mother wanting to marry a second wife who will give him a son and the mother upset about that. Al-Mansour's boldness and the very fact of her being a woman filming in Riyad must have necessitated all manner of maneuvres and perhaps such a conventional line pandering to the family institution was one of them. The girl's own story remains infinitely more engaging at the cinematic level. Wajda eventually joins the Quran competition at her school and, motivated by the desire to obtain the financial prize, wins. She finally has the money to buy her bicycle, but the teacher — knowing of her intention — insists that she should donate her prize money to Palestinian children. When Wajda's father finally does marry a second wife, the mother uses money with which she was to buy a red gown to provide Wajda with her heart's desire. She pays no attention to the kind of considerations that she cited to Wajda when the girl first expressed her desire for a bicycle: that it is improper for a girl and may compromise her virginity. Thus the defeat of woman in patriarchal society becomes the drive behind her liberation: a message that is too direct, perhaps, but one conveyed with eloquence and spontaneity. Further establishing the Zawya team's ability to select the best world cinema was the second film they programmed, Asghar Farhadi's 2013 The Past. Produced, set and filmed in France, the Iranian director's film was screened at Cannes where its lead Bérénice Bejo received the best actress award. Farhadi's 2011 A Separation had won the Berlinale's Golden Bear and the Oscar for best foreign film on its release. Farhadi seems obsessed with divorce. In The Past, too, an Iranian man, Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa), is summoned back to France by his ex-wife Marie to conclude their divorce four years after their separation. Farhadi expertly conveys the psychological states of his characters, with Ahmad's jealousy on coming across a driving license with the picture of Marie's partner Samir (Tahar Rahim, the Algerian-French actor who starred in Jacques Audiard's A Prophet, which won the grand jury prize at Cannes in 2009). Farhadi takes on the full complexity of the situation by making Marie invite Ahmad to stay with her where she lives with Samir, his son and her own two daughters. The eldest, Lucie (Pauline Burlet), who thinks of Ahmad as her father, is 16 — old enough to understand the situation. At one point Lucie tells Ahmad that her mother fell in love with an ethnically Arab man after her separation because she was looking for someone who resembled him. The plot thickens when it becomes clear that Marie is pregnant by Samir. Lucie no longer wants to live with them, what is more. And Samir himself has a dying wife, the mother of his son Fouad (Elyes Aguis), who has been comatose since she tried killing herself. In the second half of the film Farhadi moves in on the details through Ahmad, whom he employs as a kind of detective investigating a crime: a noir technique that proves remarkably engaging though it seems to undermine Farhadi's portrayal of Ahmad's personal involvement in the drama itself. In reality Ahmad still has feelings for Marie, and he has it in him to treat not only Lucie but also Fouad — Burlet and Aguis give brilliant performances — with extreme kindness and love. A dense work of Art, The Past can only make viewers excited about what Zawya has yet to offer.
