In the Last Days of the City

A mix-up leads Ra'fat Rostum to a ministerial seat that he was never meant to have. As he successfully holds onto his office for a long time, he starts having violent nightmares and asks his office manager, Ateya, to accompany him to the North Coast in an attempt to stop the nightmares.

8 characters skew lifelines that never really intersect in the suburb of Heliopolis in Cairo within a frame of time of 24 hours all in a very stagnant state and never achieving goals.

A global portrait documenting the year's events, Cinetracts '20 features the work of an international lineup of 20 filmmakers. Capturing the zeitgeist in their own backyard, the artists' short films are the culmination of a year-long residency project.

Wafaa is a young doctor who aspires to propose her project of the development of the first aid procedures to the Minister of Health. However, she gets involved with the nurse and the ambulance driver, and things get worse when the Minister is kidnapped.

Shams is a young girl who resides in the local neighborhood of Ain Shams. The life of the family turns into a tragedy when they learn their young Shams has leukemia, and they try to fulfill her only wish to visit Downtown Cairo.

We follow the journey of former soldier Nassif, who fled the war in Iraq by hiding in dark cinemas. During this time, he used to watch his favorite film, “Papillon” (1973), starring Steve McQueen. Nowadays, he is looking for this film among the Iraqi cinemas’ ruins. The search for this lost film copy in the old and obsolete cinemas becomes the sole purpose of Nassif and his primary motivation to leave his house. “Take me to the Cinema” allows us to discover Baghdad through Nassif’s eyes as he takes us to streets that contrast with his silent and quiet world. A lot has changed in today’s Iraq. The street where cinema theaters were is now a market that sells military uniforms. It is crowded with young men, fitting military shirts and shoes. The quest for “Papillon” becomes the quest of character, who does not want to acknowledge the transformations of his city, and who wants to cling on to its luminous past through the light of cinema and his inner world.