‘Alam’: Cairo Review

Dir/scr. Firas Khoury. Tunisia/Palestine/Saudi Arabia/Qatar. 2022. 109mins

This directorial debut which looks at a new third generation of Palestinians livng in Israel is a fascinating take on a group of young people whose future is so constrained it almost compresses the screen. A coming-of-age drama which hews to the conventions, Alam nonetheless offers a fresh perspective. Swirling around flags which go up and down over an Arab high school, Alam follows apathetic teenager Salem (Mahmoud Bakri) who is tugged into the future which seems to have always been waiting for him. Candid, as opposed to overwrought, this is an always-interesting insight from an over-looked perspective which bowed at Toronto and now goes into play in the Middle East through Mad Solutions after its Cairo Film Festival premiere.

Follows some clear conventions, but there’s enough that is still raw and urgent to make it stand out

There’s a dusty authenticity to the story which serves Alam well, and should see it into further festival play too. Teenagers here behave as they mostly do — mooching around, parroting political slogans delivered by those who impress them, failing to hand in their homework, lying in bed aimlessly. They could be anywhere; or, at least, anywhere the national (Israeli) flag has to be put up on the school under cover of night, as it’s something the principal doesn’t want to be seen doing in public. Anywhere that a stupid teenage prank to impress a girl will result in the end of any kind of future beyond the throwing of stones at the well-armed enemy on disputed soil.

Salem has a great deal of independence for a young man finishing up at school. He lives in a compound, separately to his family, in his grandfather’s old house, although he does drop by next door for breakfast. His uncle sits in the centre of the courtyard all day, and despite his pregnant mother’s fancy new home, it’s a broken-down world he inhabits. He’s a gold-star teenager in terms of his weed-smoking and surreptitious masturbating, but when a new girl arrives at school it rocks an already-shaky equilibrium within Salem.

He’s not far from being expelled from school anyway due to constant low-lying transgressions, but Maysaa’s (Sereen Khass) revolutionary zeal – her brother is a martyr – can only lead to danger. Then again, in a school where a clearly-biased view of history is taught to the displaced, it’s hard to find the right line on which to walk; buses don’t turn up, but being late will still result in a sanction in a system which wants to make these teenagers forget any past in which they had agency.

Salem’s father is desperate for his son to keep away from any sort of politics, but what he fails to convey is what other kind of life is to be carved out of here. Thus Salem is prey, really, to his own febrile instincts and whatever forces twist them. He’s also, the film suggests, part of a new generation which can’t forget the past despite the pressure coming from all sides, something that mounts as Israeli Independence Day approaches at the same time as Al-Nakba, which commemorates the 1948 displacements.

To a certain extent, Alam, which marks Khoury’s feature debut after a well-regarded career in shorts (in particular, Maradona’s Legs) follows some clear conventions, but there’s enough that is still raw and urgent at the film’s soul to make it stand out. Bakri gives a strong performance and, even though it’s sometimes clear it’s his first leading role, he’s continuing the tradition of his family with skill and warmth. Most of the rest of the cast are non-professionals.

Its long time in development – Alam received funding from Doha back in 2015, and has since been in the Cannes Atelier and Venice Gap financing markets since – probably illustrates the difficulty involved in financing and crewing such a feature, but it will have given Khoury time to work on further projects. It’s certainly clear we’ll be hearing more from him.