Gulf Film Festival Spotlight: Hawi

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Ibrahim El-Batout’s latest feature film is set in Alexandria and is a tale of the city and its essence portrayed through music and the intersecting lives of the characters.

The film starts out with an alternative music band battling through their ‘writer’s block’ with their mentor and trying to come up with something special which turns out to be embodied in the song “Hawi” (which translates to”Magician” – a traditional Egyptian juggler).

The entire film explores different facets of the everyday Alexandrian life through the lives of select characters who are related some way or the other. There are stories of family, love, friendship and sorrow – which are all intertwined and compressed into “Hawi”, the song.

The charm of this film lies in the fact that it is a down-to-earth, honest portrayal of a city – with inexperienced actors (which funnily enough makes it more believable) and extensive scenery. The dialogue is layered – written like prose more than actual dialogue, which can sometimes lose the audience – but when it’s right it works out quite beautifully.

The film could have probably done with about twenty minutes less of running of time – but seeing as there aren’t really defined beginnings and ends -No problem and solution – El-Batout has managed to pull off the semi- stream of consciousness style quite well.

The film also manages to deal, rather subtly, with a variety of societal issues – poverty, corruption, double standards and the co-existence of religions.

The film originally premiered in January 2011 – and is an Egyptian/Qatari production.

For more information, check out the website.

Picture taken from here.

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