East of Noon (Sharq 12)

"Once upon a time, there were frightened people. They were so frightened, their imagination escaped." In an allegorical village surrounded by sand and sea, the rebellious Abdo, a musical teenager who exudes as much Belmondo as James Dean swagger, tries to hold his own against the autocratic rule of Shawky, a showman who sows fear and delight in his own theatre show. From the grainy 16mm film, the dreamy sidesteps that would make Fellini proud, the balance between playfulness and au sérieux critique, to the poetic fables of Abdo's grandmother (and propaganda leader)... Everything about Hala Elkoussy's parable breathes cinema. East of Noon takes the genie back out of the bottle of the new African and Arab cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, and offers a satire on the mechanisms of an autocracy threatened by the revolting youth.