Poisonous Roses
« Set in the confines of an impoverished Cairo neighborhood, a community's everyday life is threatened by the ruthless rhythms of Tanneries, rotary driers crushing animal skin, hazards of poisonous w…
Poisonous Roses
« Set in the confines of an impoverished Cairo neighborhood, a community's everyday life is threatened by the ruthless rhythms of Tanneries, rotary driers crushing animal skin, hazards of poisonous waste water, Tahyea desperately clings to her brother, Saqr, whose only dream is to escape » Saqr (22) wants to flee from the grubby Egyptian tanners' district where he lives and works. His sister, Taheya (28), wants to prevent this at all costs. She sabotages the blossoming romance between her brother and a medical student and also tries to thwart Saqr's future plans as a boat refugee in Italy. Every day she brings Saqr freshly prepared lunch, implying that without her care he shall starve. We follow her in her hijab along the open sewer in which blue wastewater flows from the district, down claustrophobic alleyways where hardly any sunlight penetrates. Among the dried skins and punch-drunk mules, a shaman silently watches from his improvised throne. He is to help Taheya with an occult solution in this intriguing, skittish portrait of poverty in today's Egypt. With phenomenal shots of the towering scaffolding of a glue factory, juxtaposed with moving scenes in which the everlasting love between brothers and sisters prevails. —International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) The noise the machines make resounds in mud-filled alleys flooded by sewage water of disturbing colors; mountains of bloodstained skins start to rot from the sun's heat (though not its light); chemical vapors go through sweaty gloves and face masks effortlessly -with documentary energy, the beginning of Poisonous Roses attacks every sense at once and throws us, without warning, into the hells of Cairo's tanneries. Not everyone is able to film that accumulated, filthy geography -perhaps a complement of the one depicted in the Last Days of the City- without resorting to sleaziness and miserablism. Saleh is: by concentrating, with the utmost rigor, in the story and its characters, he convinces us that they could only exist in that world, and that that world exists only for them. —bafici
Poisonous Roses
Drama
Film Details
« Set in the confines of an impoverished Cairo neighborhood, a community's everyday life is threatened by the ruthless rhythms of Tanneries, rotary driers crushing animal skin, hazards of poisonous waste water, Tahyea desperately clings to her brother, Saqr, whose only dream is to escape » Saqr (22) wants to flee from the grubby Egyptian tanners' district where he lives and works. His sister, Taheya (28), wants to prevent this at all costs. She sabotages the blossoming romance between her brother and a medical student and also tries to thwart Saqr's future plans as a boat refugee in Italy.
Every day she brings Saqr freshly prepared lunch, implying that without her care he shall starve. We follow her in her hijab along the open sewer in which blue wastewater flows from the district, down claustrophobic alleyways where hardly any sunlight penetrates. Among the dried skins and punch-drunk mules, a shaman silently watches from his improvised throne.
He is to help Taheya with an occult solution in this intriguing, skittish portrait of poverty in today's Egypt. With phenomenal shots of the towering scaffolding of a glue factory, juxtaposed with moving scenes in which the everlasting love between brothers and sisters prevails. —International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) The noise the machines make resounds in mud-filled alleys flooded by sewage water of disturbing colors; mountains of bloodstained skins start to rot from the sun's heat (though not its light); chemical vapors go through sweaty gloves and face masks effortlessly -with documentary energy, the beginning of Poisonous Roses attacks every sense at once and throws us, without warning, into the hells of Cairo's tanneries.
Not everyone is able to film that accumulated, filthy geography -perhaps a complement of the one depicted in the Last Days of the City- without resorting to sleaziness and miserablism. Saleh is: by concentrating, with the utmost rigor, in the story and its characters, he convinces us that they could only exist in that world, and that that world exists only for them. —bafici.