By Hani Mustafa Leaving the large hall at the Cairo Opera House where the awards ceremony had been held, I could not help feeling that now that this year's Cairo International Film Festival was over people interested in film would once again have to brace themselves for a long period of cinematic starvation, during which the only fare available would be the standard Hollywood commercial films screened at almost every cinema and the few Egyptian ones on general release. Most of the latter are low-budget productions that follow a dominant recipe of farce, music and dancing and cater for an audience that seeks entertainment above all else. It is this disparity between what film represents for those that love it -- a thought-provoking experience mingled with aesthetic pleasure -- and the films presented for most of the year that heightens the sense of urgency among film-goers every time the Cairo International Festival comes round. There is the urgent need to see as much as you can while the festival lasts. As a result, much as I wanted to see the Algerian film being screened at the end of the ceremony, I immediately left after the awards were announced in order to get to a late-night showing of the Italian film Gomorra, which was being screened in the festival's "out of competition" category. I did not regret the decision, as I was more than rewarded for it. Gomorra defies simple description: one simply has to see it. The most that one can do is to try to share some of the sensations felt while watching the film. Directed by the Italian director Matteo Garrone, and focusing on what might be felt to be a very Italian subject -- the grip of the mafia over much of especially southern Italian society -- Gomorra represents a marked shift from the way in which Hollywood has presented organised crime, for example in Scorsese's Goodfellas or even Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. Based on a book by Roberto Saviano, Gomorrah: Italy's Other Mafia, in which the author chronicles the activities of Naples' Comorra (the Neapolitan version of the Cosa Nostra ), the film is indeed what one cinema critic has called "the thinking person's mafia movie." Employing a stripped-bare documentary style, a cast of mostly non-professional actors, and rough location shots, one is often tricked while watching Gomorra into thinking that everything shown in the film must be real. The film opens with a beautiful and poignant scene in which members of the mafia are shown in a tanning parlour, their sharp features set off by the building's artificial silver-blue lights. The scene moves to a crescendo of utterly matter-of-fact violence as the film's credits appear on the screen. By interweaving five stories, all of which take place in Naples and Caserta where the Camorra mafia reigns supreme, and moving quickly from one story to the other, the film presents a panorama of the activities carried out by this apparently all-powerful crime group, which include the usual litany of arms-dealing, drug-dealing, running sweatshops making fake designer garments and organising the illegal dumping of toxic waste. By filming in depressed and depressing locations around the periphery of Naples, Garrone show his audience the reality of poverty in the region and makes them experience it almost at first hand. As a result, those watching the film are able to understand how a boy dreaming of a better life, the protagonist of one of the stories, is driven to work for the Comorra, and how the two teenage protagonists of another story, who try to act independently of the rules of the clique, end up paying for it with their lives. Their role in Gomorra is reminiscent of that played by Al Pacino in Scarface, and like Pacino's character Tony Montana they end up murdered savagely. Despite the film's violent script and many bloody scenes, the rapid movements from one story to the next somehow have the effect of dissipating some of the violence, bringing to the fore the disparate lives of those who inhabit this wasteland in which mafia wars erupt regularly and from which they have no means of escape. Though still dealing with illicit trade, the story of the sweatshop where Chinese workers produce fake designer garments also provides a kind of repose from the more violent scenes included in the other stories, though it also powerfully underlines the messy reality at the bottom of this seemingly non-violent activity and how the garment trade is linked to the world of organised crime. By juxtaposing these interlocking stories, Gomorra succeeds brilliantly in providing a detailed chronicle of the criminal nature of the different business dealings of the Neapolitan mafia and the intricate links between above-ground and underground worlds. This is a film of great authenticity, both dramatically and aesthetically, and it has been filmed with a sparkling energy and underscored by a remarkable soundtrack that does not use music but depends instead on manipulating and amplifying sounds heard on the street, whether pop songs or the sound of bullets. In order to be able to grasp all the details of this masterpiece one feels it should be seen many times. It is only when watching films like Gomorra that one begins to appreciate the true importance of the Cairo International Film Festival and also to lament its short duration. Not very long ago, the festival used to last for two weeks rather than ten days. Given the fact that it is the only opportunity offered in Egypt to follow major trends in world cinema, one can only hope that the organisers will reconsider their decision to limit the festival's duration. A way should be found, too, to introduce some of the films shown during the festival into the countries' mainstream cinemas at other times of the year. After all, the experience of watching good international cinema could be one way of improving our own ailing film industry, and it could inspire budding Egyptian directors. Finally, films such as Gomorra should provide a yardstick against which Egyptian filmmakers can be encouraged to rate their own work.
