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In the Last Days of the City – An Ode to a Disappearing Home

In The Last Days of the City Film Difficulty Ranking: 4

You might have seen Fellini’s La Dolce Vita or Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty, two films that honor the city of Rome, but you probably haven’t seen In The Last Days of the City, Tamar El Said’s tribute to Cairo. Instead of a bombastic tour around the city, In the Last Days of the City’s tribute is muted. Instead of a warm film about one man’s love for his home city, In the Last Days of the City charts the director’s growing disillusionment with his home city and the increasingly militant and fundamentalist place it’s becoming.

From: Egypt, Africa
Watch: Trailer, JustWatch
Next: The Square, La Dolce Vita, The Journey

The Breakdown

El Said wanders around Cairo trying to find a new apartment. He needs a new place to live as his current landlord is evicting him to demolish his apartment block for a new more profitable construction. In his search, he visits many parts of the city, becoming an observer of everything happening. Whilst he wanders the city, he doesn’t interfere with anything going on. He watches the changing city passively and allows us (the audience) to form our own opinions on what we see. He’s like our Virgil from Dante’s Inferno, his role is to guide us around the city and show us what is changing.

Through his eye, we start to see the growing militarization and fundamentalism of the city and the gradual loss of freedom. In terms of the militarization, we see more and more army trucks and soldiers patrolling the city, plain closed policemen chasing people, and policemen beating and arresting protestors. In terms of the growing fundamentalism, we see ‘Thou Shall Not Look at Women’ slogans stuck on walls in apartment blocks and hear prayers playing over loudspeakers in apartment elevators. Backed by a soundtrack with snippets from radio shows speaking to the growing divisions in the country, the future of the city looks bleak.

There’s a scene which serves as a warning of Cairo’s negative future. In the scene, we meet a group of the directors friends in a cafe lit by light and laughter. It’s a rare scene of laughter and happiness. Each one of the group is living in a different corner of the Arabic diaspora and represent the choices that El Said has. Two of the friends are from Baghdad. They represent the extreme direction that Cairo could take. One has left the city for Europe after seeing his home city crumble to ruins. The other can’t leave his roots despite the violence, and continues to live in fear. Both of them fail to recognize the homely city that they grew up in. The third friend from Beirut, represents the middle ground between Cairo and Baghdad. His growing disillusionment and antipathy at the changes in Beirut are conquering his happy memories. But he’s still managing to grasp onto the last remnants of the city he loved before it becomes unrecognizable like Baghdad. Each of their stories are warning signs for the direction of El Said’s Cairo. He can stay and watch the city fade or he can leave the country with some of his positive memories intact.

El Said’s indecision is reflected in his struggles to make the film. He wants to capture the city he loved, the warm city of his memory, but as he’s filming, all he can see is the cities inevitable demise. He slowly comes to realize that he will either watch the city he loved slowly disappear or leave the city and preserve the happy memories that still survive in him.

What to Watch Next

If you want to watch more films which honor the director’s home city, check out Fellini and Sorrentino’s respective odes to Rome: La Dolce Vita and The Great Beauty. You could also check out Thom Andersen’s documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself, composed completely out of Hollywood films.

Or if you’re more interested in seeing towns and cities slowly disappear, check out Once Upon a Time in Venezuela and Kings of Nowhere; two documentaries of towns destroyed by nature. There’s also Cuban docu-drama, The Project of the Century featuring one town full of hope destroyed by international politics.

Lastly, for more films set in Arabic cities subject to increasing fundamentalism and war, watch The Square from Egypt, Freedom Fields from Libya and The Journey from Iraq.

Kings of Nowhere – Visit a Sinking Town the Residents Refuse to Leave

Kings of Nowhere Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Kings of Nowhere feels like it could be a sequel to Once Upon a Time in Venezuela. Instead of showing a small town on the lake that is being destroyed by sediment like in Once Upon a Time in Venezuela, the town in Kings of Nowhere has already been consumed by water. The handful of people that have refused to move live on limited resources at threat from local bandits. It doesn’t look like a town that will last much longer as it tries to survive without the support of the government and other communities.

From: Mexico, North America
Watch: Trailer, Rent on Vimeo, JustWatch
Next: Once Upon a Time in Venezuela, Fausto, Peace

The Breakdown

Kings of Nowhere starts with a man navigating a motor boat through a forest of dead tree trunks sticking out of the lake. A layer of mist sits on the lake, blocking our view of the shores or town. From the dead branches and mist, it feels like we’re being taken through a mythical underworld. Added to the clusters of half sunken buildings we see in the next scene and it’s apparent that this town isn’t one that should still be supporting human life. It has been almost completely consumed by the lake.

The director never reveals what happened to the town. Instead of hearing why it is the way it is and how people struggle to live in the town, the director allows the subjects to tell their own stories. Early on, a ferryman starts laughing as he recounts old happy memories of the town. Later, a middle aged couple talk about a sign from God which led them to start renovating the town church that had been forgotten when the people left the town. Both feel like they’re clinging onto a past that has disappeared instead of trying to start a new life elsewhere.

You also feel this in the tone of the documentary. The slow pace and lack of movement of the sequences embodies the desire of the characters to stay where they are. The languid shots of the town’s inhabitants also reveals their acceptance of the futility of life. The remaining residents lounge around, renovate churches without congregations, and boat across the lake to visit lost cows. All their actions seem pointless. Nothing they can do will bring back the town or attract new residents, which they seem to be aware of. Occupying the time they have left is all they can do to postpone the inevitable decay of the town.

Kings of Nowhere is a story of people refusing to die. Their town is the place where they’ve forged their lives and connection to their happy memories and past. Moving on would sever roots that have grown too strong and stiff. They show the stubbornness of people not willing to change at all costs – after all, home is home.

What to Watch Next

First of all you, should watch Once Upon a Time in Venezuela before or after watching Kings of Nowhere. Set in a town that is being slowly consumed by sediment from the lake, Once Upon a Time in Venezuela feels like it could be a prequel to Kings of Nowhere.

Or if you enjoy Mexican documentaries that drift through places listening to the inhabitants and their stories, check out Andrea Bussmann’s Fausto.

For more languid observational documentaries you should also check out Kazuhiro Soda’s Inland Sea and Peace.

A Night of Calypso – One Last Legendary Panamanian Concert

A Night of Calypso Film Difficulty Ranking: 2

If you’re looking for an introduction to the calypso music of Panama, you’ve come to the right place. A Night of Calypso will introduce you to some of the torch bearers of the genre, bring you up to speed with it’s influences, and give you an overview of the history of Afro-Caribbean people in Panama. You’ll also get a free ticket to a night of calypso music courtesy of Grupo Amistad.

From: Panama, North America
Watch: Trailer, IMDB
Next: Batuque, Talking About Trees, The Defiant Ones

Luxor – AFI Fest 2020

Hanna starts Luxor looking like the typical ‘gone abroad to find yourself’ young white adult. She’s dressed in loose clothing, feels an other worldly connection to the foreign place, and sleeps around. However, whilst her character never completely loses this image in the film, our interpretation of her changes.

Instead of opening up, she becomes more closed emotionally as the film progresses. It doesn’t feel like we learn more about her. Scene by scene, her face becomes a canvas of lonely stoicism, even after she meets her former lover, Sultan. The only moment she breaks this facade in the first part of the film is when she automatically switches into ‘work-mode’ to help a tourist that faints. Otherwise she’s made a shell around her personality to defend herself against hardships.

Luxor could have slipped into the trap of exoticizing a foreign location from the perspective of an outsider. Whilst it does turn Ancient Egypt into a place for a white person to contemplate (side note: shout out to the British Museum), it feels self aware of what it’s doing. Hanna finds connections on her own organically, and other connections to the land through the eyes of a local Sultan. It also recognizes that tourists do visit Luxor to exoticize ‘the other’ by representing them in the spiritual group of westerners that followed the Grateful Dead, and the obnoxious American tourist from the opening. Again it just about avoids the trap of falling into the problematic ‘white girl finds herself in exotic location’.

Instead it uses the environment, and Hanna’s connection to it, to evoke nostalgia for Hanna’s past life with Sultan. We learn that this isn’t the first time she’s been to Luxor (having been here with Sultan earlier in life). Now she’s older, she has experienced trauma (that is only hinted at in the film), and her mind is in a different place. She’s seeing the same locations, but in a different light. Everything feels familiar, shown in her confident exploration of the place on her own, but it also feels different, as shown in her inquisitive interaction with the ruins. Her new connection to the place suggests that her return may be fated, and that she may have found her home and future.

Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.