Al abwab al moghlaka
Egypt,
1999, 109 min
Shown in 2000
CREDITS
- dir
-
Atef Hetata
- prod
-
Gabriel Khoury, Marianne Khoury
- scr
-
Atef Hetata
- cam
-
Samir Bahzan
- editor
-
Dalia el Nasser
- cast
-
Sawsan Badr, Ahmed Azmi, Mahmoud Hemeida
- source
-
MISR International Films, 35, Champollion St., Cairo, Egypt. FAX: 20-2-578-8033. EMAIL: mif@zeus.starnet.com.eg
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
OTHER
The engrossing feature debut of longtime Youssef Chahine assistant Atef Hetata, who has also worked with Graeme Clifford and Spike Lee, centers on a teenage boy caught in an ever-tightening vise between incestuous longings for his mother and the authoritarian temptations of religious fanaticism. Set in 1990, during the Gulf War, at a time when Islamic fundamentalism was on the rise, this high-quality example of new Egyptian cinema stands out as a vehicle for showing mounting social tensions and, much rarer, a convincing psychological portrait. When his high-school teacher begins courting his mother, the disturbed, sexually confused Mohamad gears his massive Oedipus complex towards a dangerous sect of religious fanatics, who convince him that he—being a man—should have total control over her life. Through all the madness that ensues, with Mohamad embracing fundamentalism as a way out of his adolescent confusion, Hetata never lets his main characters sink into cardboard stereotypes. With its carefully penned script, nuanced, naturalistic acting and admirable production values, The Closed Doors reveals a finely balanced portrait of various social classes caught in a swirl of religious, cultural and personal fixations, done with remarkable sympathy, sensitivity and control.
—Deborah Young, Variety
FACTOID #27
A surrealist stop-motion animator, the Czech Jan Svankmajer, was the first recipient of the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award in 1997. The POV Award honors the lifetime achievement of a filmmaker who works outside of feature-length narrative filmmaking.
