Saturday Short

I like to think of my film as a film about friendship. 

This is how I always thought of it. But this is not all it is. 

Because I think that the city is also carrying the parent, 

the lover, and the friend. But what are more important

are the memories it carries.

~ Tamer El Said, Guernica Interview 

Film Poster

Today's short is the trailer for the critically acclaimed In the Last Days of the City (2016), the first feature-length film from Egyptian director Tamer El Said. Written by El Said and Rasha Salti, the screenplay, about a filmmaker, Khalid, in Cairo in 2009 who is trying to make a movie about the city even as he struggles to deal with loss in his life. To motivate Khalid, his friends send him footage about their lives in Beirut, Baghdad, and Berlin.

The elegiac, 118-minute film, described as "docu-fiction", has been screened at numerous film festivals (it premiered at Berlin International Film Festival last year) and has received a number of awards.

In the Last Days of the City on FaceBook

Watch a film discussion with El Said and Khalid Abdalla (he plays "Khalid") following the movie's North American premiere at "New Directors/New Films 2016" sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

Yasmin El Rashidi, "Cairo Without End",  NYR Daily (New York Review of Books Blog), January 17, 2017

Sara Elkamel, "Tamer El Said: Moments in Eternal Cities" (Interview), Guernica, June 13, 2016

"Come Undone", ArtForum, March 9, 2016