Three films on memory, loss and state violence

Jean-Luc Godard once said that all you need to make a film is a girl and a gun. That might be true, but throw in a dog, and you've got something even more special. The Egyptian film "Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo" gives us all three, but it's not the pulpy thriller Godard envisioned. Instead, it's something far more delicate and grounded—a slow-burning debut feature by Khaled Mansour that deals in existential weight rather than tropes, without being completely detached from genre aesthetics. 

The film follows Hassan, a young man living with his mother and their dog, Rambo, in a modest Cairo apartment. Their landlord, Karem, wants them out at any cost so he can expand his garage. When Rambo bites Karem during a panic-fueled altercation, the vengeful landlord demands the dog be handed over, likely so he can kill him. What unfolds is a tense, sad and deeply human story about a man trying to find safety, not just for his dog, but for himself.  

Trauma seeps into every frame. Cairo, shot almost entirely at night by cameraman Ahmed Tarek Bayoumi, is cloaked in shadows, lit only by dim streetlamps. It's a side of the city rarely shown in the mainstream—quiet, eerie and heavy—far from the bustling, lively Cairo of postcards. 

The darkness isn't just an aesthetic; it mirrors Hassan's sadness and solitude. While the film provides little exposition, we learn there is an absent father in the hero's story. Hassan is a young man with no protection other than a dog he might lose. The events of the film, including glimpses into the murky world of dogfighting, all orbit a central metaphor: what does it mean to have a haven? In "Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo", home is something fragile and fiercely contested—the domestic is deeply political.

It's fitting, then, that the film screened at the recently concluded 16th edition of ALFILM, Berlin's premier Arab film festival, which has become a haven of sorts for the city's manifold Arab communities. ALFILM offers a space for stories that are often marginalised or ignored in the city's broader cultural landscape, whether through documentaries on the ongoing war in Sudan or special events on Syria's harrowing prisons. The festival doesn't shy away from political clarity, even in a German climate where, for instance, solidarity with Palestine is often met with unease or repression.

Steeped in melancholy—and hashish

If "Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo" is grounded in harsh everyday realities, "Perfumed with Mint", another Egyptian debut, feels like its spiritual sibling from an alternative dimension. Surreal, opaque, but equally steeped in melancholy, the film is also shot largely in darkness and carried by a slow, dreamlike rhythm. Muhammed Hamdy creates a world suspended between sleeping and waking, between memory and the present.

The film follows a group of characters—mostly men—who spend their days smoking hashish, reciting poetry and drifting from place to place. It's never quite clear who they are or what binds them together. At times, it's not even clear if they're alive or dead. Are they ghosts, or just people weighed down by having lost too much in life? 

The film's surrealist edge is revealed quite gently: one man begins to sprout mint from his body, a poetic detail that gives the film its title. There's no real explanation for it, but it feels oddly natural. This is what makes the film so hypnotic—the boundaries between the real and the fantastical dissolve, leaving us in a space where everything is both strange and familiar, even when it's bizarre. 

Hamdy has worked extensively as a cinematographer, and it shows. His frames are gorgeous, his use of shadows masterful. And like Mansour, he's not afraid of shooting in the dark. "Perfumed with Mint" doesn't offer any real answers, and it barely follows a narrative, but it leaves you with enough to mull over days after you've watched it. Like a dream you only half remember, its characters and fragmented scenes linger.

A fractured family

If the first two films explore loss and repression through fictional lenses, a third Egyptian film at ALFILM brings us into the realm of lived history. Bassam Mortada's documentary "Abo Zaabal 89" is a deeply personal and emotionally layered film. Mortada sets out to understand his family history and the rift caused by the incarceration and torture of his father Mahmoud, for socialist activism, at the notorious Abo Zaabal prison in 1989. 

What starts as an excavation— through old tape recordings, found footage material and interviews—turns into a quiet, haunting portrait of a son trying to reconnect with his past and with his two separated parents, whose lives were irrevocably changed by the experience.

Abo Zaabal functions not only as a prison; it's first and foremost a symbol. The facility has long been an infamous site of political repression, detention and torture. Mortada pieces together the story of his father's incarceration, his departure from Egypt after his release and his relocation to Vienna. Bassam's mother, who stayed behind, is in many ways the emotional anchor of the film. She is quiet, composed, but visibly marked by years of abandonment and silence.  

As with the other two films, there is a larger question at play: what does state violence do to a people? Whether it is the protagonist's powerlessness in the face of eviction in "Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo", the aimless "ghosts" of "Perfumed with Mint", or the shattered family unit in "Abo Zaabal 89", each story touches on the lasting effects of authoritarian control on bodies, families and collective futures. Mortada also manages to extend his gaze beyond his parents, speaking with other former prisoners and their children. What emerges is a kind of generational map—a mosaic of lives shaped by the same trauma in different ways. 

And while the film focuses on the past, it echoes loudly in the present, too. It's impossible to watch Bassam and his father, Mahmoud, without thinking of Alaa Abd el-Fattah and other political prisoners in Egypt and beyond. Though it never explicitly mentions them, the film is in dialogue with these cases, reminding the viewer that history is not something left behind, but something that loops and returns.