Feathers (2021)
April 16, 2025 12:58 AM - Subscribe
An award-winning debut feature by young Egyptian film-maker Omar El Zohairy, a bizarre and miraculous story like no other I’ve ever seen, not even by Michael Haneke or Yorgos Lanthimos. The trailer.
It opens with a disturbing and unexplainable scene of a person who sets himself on fire in a dystopian junkyard. It then tells of a poor and silent woman, whose husband is accidentally turned into a chicken by a magician at a birthday party for her 4 yo. She is left to fend for herself and her 3 babies without any surviving skills or redeeming qualities. The depressing and Kafkaesque nightmare takes place in the dirtiest, shabbiest rooms you’ve even seen, and is very hard to watch, if it wasn’t for the deliberate, restrained skills of this unique storyteller.
If you ever wondered what it’s like to be an extremely poor, illiterate and unremarkable woman at the very bottom of Egyptian society, this is the film for you. An incredible find. 8/10.
A review from Hootsmaguire.
89% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Get a taste for El Zohairy's style by starting with his two earlier shorts, found on his Vimeo:
🍿 Based on a Chekhov’s story, The Aftermath of the Inauguration of the Public Toilet at Kilometer 375 is an absurdist tale about a lowly employee who feels the need to continue apologizing to a superior, because he sneezed during a small ceremony in the middle of nowhere. Feels very much like a Roy Andersson sketch. Dusty, neglected desert roads, dirty surfaces, and shame.
🍿 Zafir (“Breathe Out”), a wordless, sparse story of a thin man taking care of his sick wife, whose heavy snoring keeps him awake at night. Minimalist decay and suffocation in a poor man’s apartment.
It opens with a disturbing and unexplainable scene of a person who sets himself on fire in a dystopian junkyard. It then tells of a poor and silent woman, whose husband is accidentally turned into a chicken by a magician at a birthday party for her 4 yo. She is left to fend for herself and her 3 babies without any surviving skills or redeeming qualities. The depressing and Kafkaesque nightmare takes place in the dirtiest, shabbiest rooms you’ve even seen, and is very hard to watch, if it wasn’t for the deliberate, restrained skills of this unique storyteller.
If you ever wondered what it’s like to be an extremely poor, illiterate and unremarkable woman at the very bottom of Egyptian society, this is the film for you. An incredible find. 8/10.
A review from Hootsmaguire.
89% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Get a taste for El Zohairy's style by starting with his two earlier shorts, found on his Vimeo:
🍿 Based on a Chekhov’s story, The Aftermath of the Inauguration of the Public Toilet at Kilometer 375 is an absurdist tale about a lowly employee who feels the need to continue apologizing to a superior, because he sneezed during a small ceremony in the middle of nowhere. Feels very much like a Roy Andersson sketch. Dusty, neglected desert roads, dirty surfaces, and shame.
🍿 Zafir (“Breathe Out”), a wordless, sparse story of a thin man taking care of his sick wife, whose heavy snoring keeps him awake at night. Minimalist decay and suffocation in a poor man’s apartment.
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posted by latkes at 7:32 PM on April 16