Director: Mohamed Shebl

The Talisman

Protagonist Mahmoud is a high school teacher, who lives with his entire family in a tiny apartment. The landlord is desperately trying to force them out to the point of enlisting the devil’s help. Like “Al-Ins wal Djinn,” the film’s opening scenes establish a sense of tension that continues to mount until, for some reason, a goat shoots a star-shaped laser out of its forehead, and everything quickly falls apart. Furniture spontaneously combusts, an invisible presence settles in Mahmoud’s apartment, and the devil rapes his wife and she thinks it’s an earthquake. Things reach their peak when, for the second time on this list, Yousra is drenched in actual chicken blood.