Movie Details
Original Language:Arabic
Mafrouza
"A five-part chronicle of a neighbourhood in Alexandria"Movie
DirectorEmmanuelle Demoris
12 hr 21 min
Plot
Mafrouza is a film in 5 parts, shot by Emmanuelle Demoris over two years spent in Mafrouza, a shanty town built on the site of a Greco-Roman necropolis in Alexandria. Starting with her first encounter with the inhabitants, Mafrouza tells the stories of a few people who change as the months go by; the interactions create a polyphonic chronicle. Life is hard in Mafrouza, but the inhabitants resist with grace and strength: Adel and Ghada, a young couple in search of happiness; Mohamed Khattab, grocer-humanist-sheikh; Hassan, a freedom-loving-thug-singer; Abu Hosny, an old loner with a flooded home; the peasant Om Bassiouni with her bread oven; the Chenabou rag-and-bone family; Gihad, a young wrestler,... All of these people embody and tell of their own resistance, which makes the nieghbourhood a space of freedom and vitality.
