“An honest and lived-in portrait of female life in rural Egypt.”

With both her parents being actors, and her mother a writer on top of it, getting into the business must have been somewhat of a foregone conclusion for Dutch-Egyptian director Ashgan El-Hamus. For her feature-length debut Al Baraneya she follows the parental roots even deeper. A return to the village the Egyptian side of her family originally hails from, the film is a deeply personal look at community, being a woman, and the lure of modernity, and features a range of family members alongside professional actors in the main parts. After her short Birdland, nominated for the Dutch equivalent of the Oscar, and this striking debut, El-Hamus establishes herself as a talented director to keep an eye on.

Amal (Reem Amer, primarily known for TV and theater work) and her much younger sisters and cousins roam the busy intersections of Cairo every day in an attempt to sell jasmine flowers as a natural air freshener. Amal is 18 and very pregnant, but rarely sees prospective father Omar (Mostafa Noureldin), who is working in construction to save up enough money for an apartment on the city’s outskirts. Her family toils in the wheat fields like many generations before them, and with the price of wheat dropping, hard times lie ahead. Amal’s father gets an offer to sell his land, and Amal sees this as a chance to leave her difficult life behind and join her more worldly beautician cousin Rania (Salma Khattab), in pursuit of a more modern way of living. But her family wavers on the offer, causing Amal to take matters into her own hands. When her grandmother, Amal’s closest family member, dies, she sneaks off to the city. But death and life are closer together than she hoped for.

Outside the named actors, the rest of Al Baraneya‘s cast is comprised of El-Hamus’ (extended) family. The comfort these people have around each other sometimes makes it feel like you are watching one of those fly-on-the-wall documentaries by directors like Claire Simon or Frederick Wiseman. But El-Hamus shows a very good eye for composition as well, not just through the lines of concrete at either the family home or Amal and Omar’s unfinished apartment, but also in her use of color. The yellow-golden wheat contrasting beautifully with the lush greens that surround the fields, or the deep red bricks of the homes that border them, make Al Baraneya a visual feast, aided by Douwe Hennink’s strong cinematography, in particular in the interior shots. A moment where the washing of the grandmother’s feet before she is brought to her final resting place is shown through shadows cast on the wall particularly stands out.

While the hidden talent of the non-professionals playing Amal’s parents is surprising and the gaggle of children have an irresistible charm, the film belongs to Amer, who plays off of her counterparts in the more free-flowing, seemingly improvised scenes, but has a strong handle on Amal’s emotions in moments where looking natural on camera isn’t enough and true acting is asked for. A late scene in which Amal listens with admiration to the boisterous chatter of Rania and her co-workers, camera solely on her, shows a talent that needs to be explored more; it is one of the better female performances of the year.

That scene also illustrates the draw big city life has on young women (and men, no doubt) influenced by TikTok and glitzy TV shows, to whom electronic cigarettes and shiny shopping malls seem mondaine. “If you think these people are happy, then you’re mistaken,” her grandma wisely tells her, but the lure is too strong. It is the tale of a way of life slowly coming to an end, with small-time farmers like her father either having no successors or being pressured to sell their land, and economic change eroding rural life. The decision whether to sell or not lies solely with Sayed as the family head, but El-Hamus keeps the film very female-focused; we never see the men discussing the deal directly, but get our information through women, big or small, listening in from the kitchen or through a window. The only time Sayed truly discusses the possible sale is with his wife, but it is Safaa Ahmed Kobak who does the heavy lifting in this scene. “Are we people of balconies?“, she asks her husband when he suggests moving into an apartment.

Al Baraneya is perhaps light on story, with many scenes more focused on contextualizing Amal’s life than on narrative thrust, but El-Hamus’ patience and personal connection give the film a rich texture and a deep understanding of the life that she chronicles. No doubt the strong personal connection helped here, with gaining trust from the cast and with a grasp of the culture she portrays, no matter how blond and blue-eyed she may be. Al Baraneya is a slice of life that the director perhaps does not know firsthand, but has come to understand through familial osmosis. This makes the film an honest and lived-in portrait of female life in rural Egypt, and a very promising debut by someone with a distinct directorial voice.