In competition in the section A certain look of the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, Aisha Can’t Fly Away Mark the eagerly awaited entry of the Egyptian director Morad Mostafa in the feature film. If his name is not unknown in Cannes – several of his short films have circulated there, in particular What we don it know about Mariam (2021) or I Promise you paradise Presented at the criticism week in 2023, where he won the Golden Rail – this is the first time that Mostafa has been selected in one of the official sections of the festival, with a film that confirms the harsh and socially committed universe that he has explored since his inception.
The first in the film took place today. On stage, Morad Mostafa thanked his producers, his team, his parents, as well as the Egyptian cinema, which he considers the matrix of his journey. “” It is thanks to Egyptian cinema that I became director “He said with emotion. “” I am proud to represent Egypt with my film He added. Since the film selection ClashIn 2016, no Egyptian film was part of the official selection.
In Aisha Can’t Fly Awaythe camera follows the journey of a young Sudanese, installed in Cairo. Aisha, interpreted with great sobriety by Buliana Simona, works in a sort of placement agency for caregivers and housewives. She intervenes in individuals, often alone and sick, where she performs thankless tasks: cleaning, care, daily assistance. His days are repetitive, exhausting, punctuated by long journeys in minibus and metro. In the evening, she returned to the dilapidated district where she lives, dominated by a gang of thugs which imposes her law between violence, drug trafficking and racketeering. The gang leader offers her a roof, but on one condition: that she helps her in the burglary of the apartments where she works. Aisha tries to resist, but ends up giving in, for lack of alternative.
The film draws up an unhappiness of the precariousness of migrant women in major cities, victims of silent exploitation and trivialized violence. Aisha’s trajectory, taken in the gear of an oppressive system, recalls that of the heroine of Feathers the Egyptian film of Omar El Zohairy presented in Cannes in 2021. Same universe of alienation and misery: a dirty, dilapidated, noisy environment, without escape, and presence of a volatile.
An ostrich appears from the first scenes. She prowls in the places frequented by Aisha: in front of her house, in the old sick man he takes care of, at the restaurant where her friend works. The bird returns, silent, insisting, like a double, an omen. Little by little, Aisha is transformed. A strange rash appears on his belly, then extends. She does not seem to suffer, but her body changes, as if he absorbed, under the skin, all the accumulated violence. And the ostrich, this bird incapable of flying, becomes the perfect allegory of Aisha: nailed to the ground, unable to rise, prisoner of a world where each attempt at emancipation is repressed.
Everything, in the film, strengthens this feeling of suffocation: the dull colors of heroin clothes – gray, black, brown -, the unhealthy place, the monotony of meals (always the same spaghetti with tomato sauce), repetitive gestures. Aisha only laughed once, during a visit to friends where she finally eats another dish. This fleeting moment contrasts violently with the rest of the story. Even his rare moments of comfort-the meals offered by his restorer friend, himself exploited-seem to be stuck in fatality.
The most freezing scene in the film occurs when Aisha, harassed by a client, asks his boss to remove it from the mission. The latter refuses, trivialized the assault, and forces him to continue. Aisha ends up giving in to man, forced to give him a blowjob. From there, the metamorphosis accelerates. Aisha’s body becomes the ground of an inexorable mutation, a metaphor for a submission which is part of the flesh.
Some spectators have nevertheless criticized the film its most raw scenes, notably a sequence where Aisha, in a moment of rocking, turns into a cannibal and literally devours his boss. This scene, violent and frontal, aroused lively reactions: several people had also left the room at that time. But sincerely, why not? Through these excesses of violence, it is possible that the director wanted to express how horrible Aisha is, how much she suffers, to what extent she enrages and sometimes has revenge. This recourse to the extreme is undoubtedly not free: it translates an unbearable suffering, which has become monstrous, which can no longer be contained.
We could also blame Aisha Can’t Fly AwayA certain slowness, even a few lengths. Certain repetitive scenes would have gained to be tightened. But this somewhat excessive duration may also participate in the confinement effect that the film seeks to transmit: time, for Aisha, never seems to pass, and his life stretches as an endless prison. This slight excess duration does not endure the strength of the film, but would have deserved to be readjusted to further strengthen the impact.
This first feature film by Morad Mostafa, as trying as they are mastered, impresses with the precision of her staging, the rigor of her words, the direction of sober actress. The quasi-documentary approach to Cairo and its poor neighborhoods suffer from any exaggeration: the city is filmed as it is, raw, without filter. And yet, realism gradually gives way to a disturbing discreet dreamrism, where Aisha’s body becomes the very scene of the story. The film is thus part of a line of transformation stories where the imaginary serves to say the inexpressible, sometimes assuming formal radicality, but always at the service of the subject.
With Aisha Can’t Fly Away Morad Mostafa signs a first poignant feature film, which extends his work on invisible, marginalized, oppressed. In this social tale tinged with fantastic, he gives a voice – and a body – to those that we refuse to see. And even if Aisha cannot fly, she takes us with her in her fall, slow, silent, overwhelming.
It should be notedAisha Can’t Fly Awayis co -produced by Tunisian Dorra Bouchouche and Lina Chaabane.
Neïla Driss
