Actor: Donia Massoud

Yallah! Underground

Yallah! Underground follows some of today’s most influential and progressive artists in Arab underground culture from 2009 to 2013 and documents their work, dreams and fears in a time of great change for Arab societies. In a region full of tension, young Arab artists in the Middle East have struggled for years to express themselves freely and to promote more liberal attitudes within their societies. During the Arab Spring, like many others of this new generation, local artists had high hopes for the future and took part in the protests. However, after years of turmoil and instability, young Arabs now have to challenge both old and new problems, being torn between feelings of disillusion and a vague hope for a better future.

Shall I Compare You to a Summer's Day?

The director turns the diary of his sexual adventures into a serial narrative in the style of “One Thousand and One Nights”. This polyamorously-minded queer musical applies the same playful approach to folk tales as it does to Egyptian pop music.

The Aquarium

Youssef is a hotshot anesthesiologist who often sleeps in his car for privacy. Laila is the careerist host of a late night radio call-in show. These two members of Cairo's elite, lost souls traveling parallel paths of longing and disconnection, are the principal fish in Yousry Nasrallah's The Aquarium, a meditation on the intellectual capital of the Middle East, now bent under the sway of repression in all its forms.

In the Heliopolis Flat

Najwa, a music teacher from the city of Minya, Upper Egypt, seizes the opportunity to come to Cairo on a trip with her students to search for Tahany, her first teacher that taught her music and used to live in an apartment in Heliopolis.

Stay Awake

Using his magical powers, Motma'en-a "jinni" who takes the shape of human and descends on one of Egypt's poor areas- tries desperately to make things better, only to be met with the government restrictions and the complicated reality.