“As hauntingly beautiful as it is deeply disquieting”

If there is one way to describe Happy Birthday, the beautiful directorial debut of Sarah Goher, it would be as “a tale of two Egypts” – when the film starts we are introduced to a family that lives in a beautiful home in what appears to be a well-maintained suburb, where every luxury is afforded to them and paradise essentially exists at their front door. However, it soon becomes clear that this is not entirely authentic, as Toha, one of the young girls who lives in this house, isn’t a relative or even a friend of the family’s daughter Nelly. Rather, she is their eight-year-old maid, enlisted as cheap labour for the hedonistic grandmother. None of them seems to see any problem in employing someone so young in manual labour, especially not Toha herself, who happily does her domestic duties without any hesitation. However, when Nelly wakes up on her ninth birthday and becomes the focus of a lavish celebration, Toha gradually begins to understand the place she occupies in the life of this family. This harrowing realisation makes her question the kindness extended towards her over time, and underlines how she was nothing more than a representation of the vulgar wealth and lack of moral scruples exemplified by this family. This is a heartbreaking yet poignant work that highlights the socio-economic divide, filtering it through the perspective of a child protagonist as she navigates a system she quickly learns is inherently stacked against her, despite her efforts to change, by any means necessary, how she is perceived. It culminates in a film that is as hauntingly beautiful as it is deeply disquieting, an audacious start to what we can only expect to be a fascinating directorial career.

On the surface, the themes contained in Happy Birthday are not particularly revolutionary or new to the medium in any way. We find stories about social imbalance and the perpetual tug-of-war between people on different rungs of the economic spectrum very often. This ultimately means that any work that addresses this topic will need to find a new approach – and while it may seem peculiar at first, some quick research shows that domestic work is strangely absent from much of the legislation put in place to prevent child labour in Egypt, meaning that it becomes more of a moral matter than a legal one. Goher uses this ambiguity as the starting point for this story, which explores social division through employing the time-honoured technique of the child protagonist. Toha represents everything that is beautiful about childhood – her wide-eyed curiosity, tendency to always assume the best in others and genuine belief in the beauty of life, all of which is challenged in only a few hours, as she quickly becomes wiser to the realities of the world that surrounds her and the people she was taught to blindly trust because they provide her family with benefits at the expense of her childhood innocence. The film offers some complex insights into contemporary Egypt and how, like many countries in the Global South. it can be divided into two very different versions of society, with this story focusing on someone who exists in the ambiguous space between them, witnessing both the splendour of the wealthy and the despair of the impoverished, and learning more when confronted with such a blunt juxtaposition than she ever would in school.

The qualities that make Happy Birthday so incredibly effective all have to do with its profound authenticity – every ounce of impact left by this film is the result of a director working to create something memorable. This begins with the central performance, delivered by Doha Ramadan in her acting debut. There is a tendency to be more lenient on young actors, since they haven’t had time to sharpen their skills or develop their talents over time – but the moment we see Ramadan on screen, we immediately realise that this is a performance that can easily be judged by the same metric as actors far older than her. She is genuinely quite impressive, which is not only a credit to someone who appears to be innately very gifted but also to the director, whose ability to extract such extraordinary work from someone so young is perhaps the film’s greatest accomplishment. It’s not easy to make a film that features a childhood protagonist without resorting to making them overly precocious or depending too much on their adorable personalities to overcome any shortcomings in the formal aspects of the performance. That is mercifully not a concern here, as every moment of the film is filled to the brim with this exuberant, charming performance by someone who hopefully has a bright future in the industry. It also helps that the film knows precisely how to handle its tones, understanding the very narrow boundary between tugging on the heartstrings and forcing viewers to feel specific emotions. Every decision in Happy Birthday is purposeful, and it shows enough restraint not to need to resort to the same heavy-handed, hackneyed techniques that we may expect from similarly themed films.

Happy Birthday proves that a simple premise can be extremely effective when the right blend of emotions, strong performances and wholehearted commitment from everyone involved is present, and can actually be quite effective, even if there are moments that do veer towards the predictable. This is a surprisingly deep, compelling work that overcomes its more rudimentary themes to become one of the most stark and pointed critiques of contemporary society, a depiction of social order and how it can often be used as a weapon against those who are unlucky enough not to have the same level of privilege. It is anchored by a wonderful performance that carries the entire film and represents the director’s intention to deliver a poignant, compelling exploration of a number of themes without becoming too focused on delivering an obvious message, allowing it instead to flourish organically. Powerful emotions intersect with strong, forceful commentary and are presented in a format that may appear gentle at first, but has an anger lingering beneath the surface that gradually and methodically emerges as the story unfolds. This all leads to Happy Birthday being one of the year’s most unexpectedly affecting works, and a firm reminder of the many disparities that guide (if not outright define) so much of contemporary society and its inherent divisions.