A group of friends, mostly upper-class men and women while away their time on a houseboat on the Nile in Cairo by getting drunk and high on hashish, and pursuing sexual affairs. They constantly joke and their world play reveals truths about political hypocrisy, corruption and government propaganda. When a journalist starts hanging out with them to write about their lifestyle asks, “When do you think the Middle East problem will be resolved?”. The reply, “When the newspapers tell us it has been resolved.”

The leisurely activities in the houseboat are a form of escapism, a collective numbing from the harsh realities of day-to-day living, or the horrors of war. An escapism that leads to apathy, a hit-and-run midway also reveals a lack of accountability.

An adaptation of a 1966 Naguib Mahfouz novel that anticipated the Six-Day War in 1967, the sense of defeat and political disillusionment in Egyptian society that followed, and a critique of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s political era, the film feels extremely relevant in today’s global political climate. Political disillusionment remains, but today it is no longer associated with the Middle East alone. — HIND MEZAINA