Like most masterpieces of Egyptian cinema, Dawud Abdel-Sayed’s Kit Kat (1991) is criminally inaccessible outside of poorly processed copies on YouTube; constantly interrupted by deliberately intrusive ads of Jeep’s latest war-tested vehicles and McDonald’s sickly sweet shakes. That such nuisances accompany a cutthroat critique of the working class’s neoliberal evisceration is an irony too rich and obvious to warrant further reflection. The eponymous neighborhood speaks for itself.

The history of sha’bi (popular/poor) Cairo is that of colonialism, migration, and urban decay. As early twentieth-century British colonization brought European capital and personnel into the city, an equally glamorous and seedy nightlife emerged, sprouting clubs and brothels across the expanding cityscape. One such major spot was Imbaba’s Kit Kat Club, a venue so prominent and prestigious that even the decadent and tyrannical King Farouk was said to be one of its frequent patrons. As was the case globally, the period’s asymmetrical economic boom brought millions from the countryside to the capital. When the money left, they stayed.

These are Abdel-Sayed’s tragicomic heroes. At the center is Sheikh Hosni (Mahmud Abdel-Aziz), a blind man claiming to see all, refusing both canes and the help of others. To show off his knowledge of the neighborhood and its residents, he tricks Sheikh ‘Ebeid—a blind imam—into thinking that he can see so that Hosni can present as objective reality his fantasies of what they encounter as they walk. He even takes ‘Ebeid to the cinema. Narrating what he “sees” on screen, Hosni transforms a cheesy sword-and-sandal flick—Clash of the Titans (1981)—into a thrilling sensual detective movie. He even chastises the man ahead of them for blocking his view. So convincing is his performance that the man actually lowers his head.

Hosni ostensibly literalizes the cliché idiom, “the blind leading the blind,” but he’s no object of critique. Indeed, such a comically politicized subversion of disability has precedents, most notably Lenin el-Ramly’s 1989 blockbuster play Wighat Nazar (A Point of View) in which a care facility’s blind residents overthrow corrupt administrators. Hosni, too, is rebellious, but not revolutionary. His nights are for hash and music with friends in the dukan (tiny retail space) he owns, to the fury of his single unemployed son, Youssef (Sherif Mounir). As for mornings, those’re for sleeping, patronizing the coffee house, sourcing hash, and mischief. In the film’s most iconic scene, he snatches a neighbor’s new Vespa for a joyride, whizzing past screaming pedestrians until he crashes into stacked crates of chickens.

Rather than hedonism, this aimlessness grew from the ruins of a promised life. Despite talent and classical training, Hosni hasn’t worked as a musician for decades. College did his son no good, only youth affords him the dream of immigration. Even property, that pillar of the middle-class, has failed Hosni. His dukan is abandoned. The aforementioned coffee shop, the bottom floor of his father’s house, no longer provides him sufficient rent. His debts accumulate, even after he sells the house. Debilitating social conditions weren’t new to Cairo’s working-class, nor to cinema. What was allegedly new was New Realism, an acclaimed informal movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Alongside Abdel-Sayed, its most prominent names were Atef el-Tayeb and Mohamed Khan. Because they overwhelmingly shot on location, these directors’ excellent work has frequently been misread as an attack on classical Egyptian cinema. On the contrary, they adored realist directors like Salah Abu-Saif—who often exited the studio—and saw their work as an extension, not repudiation, of the past. Their emphasis on working-class heroes, gender anxieties, and lived urban space was not in itself “new.”

What was new was Sadat’s merciless privatization and normalization with Israel; a stifling sense of economic and military defeat, pervasive grief for the vanished midcentury promise of mobility and progress. It was precisely because they richly captured and responded to that malaise that the New Realists’ films endure. They adapted to the public film sector’s collapse by shooting the street. They centered the ascendant nouveau-riche’s villainy. Most importantly, they narrativized suppressed desire in the face of economic instability. Kit Kat in particular astutely linked desire with space, as seen in Youssef’s lover, Fatma (Aida Riad). Neglected by her husband abroad, Fatma secretly divorces him and lusts after the much younger Youssef. She first appears strolling around the neighborhood, praying to a local saint for Youssef’s reciprocation. Frustrated, she hurries home desperate to be alone; an impossibility in an overcrowded apartment. She rushes from room to room, quick reverse shots emphasizing her awkward relationship with her siblings and their children. Finally, a dark empty bathroom. A single patch of light, like a halo, illuminates her weeping face. It is a moment of quiet devastation, but no catharsis—a niece turns the crude fluorescent on as she barges in. Fatma screams.

Eventually, she seduces the inexperienced Youssef into a doomed relationship—taking her with him to Europe is not an option. They only discuss such matters in the precious moments Fatma’s access to a storage room affords them. Intimacy is thus revealed to be a privilege, further emphasized by Youssef’s inability to sexually perform. “I can’t even be a man with you,” he says, bemoaning the fiscal castration of unemployment. Only after beating up goons harassing his father for his debt is he able to bed Fatma, an anxious turn of events for her as she reasonably worries he will now lose interest. Whether or not he does is a mystery, as is the question of whether or not he immigrates. Like all New Realist films, Kit Kat was uninterested in neat resolutions. Its happy ending is reconciliation between Sheikh Hosni and Youssef—hilariously, on another Vespa ride, this time with Youssef riding in the back. As they leave the neighborhood and race by the corniche, Youssef warns his father to slow down, so he goes faster. They cartoonishly crash into the Nile and emerge in the last shot from the water into a cerulean sky. We do not see the sunrise, but we know it to be dawn.