‘The Settlement’ review: Egyptian debut is a bleak and dispiriting revenge thriller

Dir/scr: Mohamed Rashad. Egypt/France/Germany/Qatar/Saudi Arabia. 2025. 93mins

In a bleak and lawless corner of Alexandria, Egypt, a delinquent 23-year-old son is pulled back into the family fold following his father’s untimely death in a workplace accident. Hossam (Adham Shoukry) has been offered his father’s old job at a metal working factory as a form of under-the-counter compensation, and his 12-year-old brother Maro (Ziad Islam) insists on quitting school and joining him. But tensions simmer, and the brothers fixate on the idea that their father’s death needs to be avenged. There’s a grim inevitability to this crudely-plotted, factually-inspired first fiction feature from Egyptian documentary filmmaker Mohamed Rashad, a sense of guaranteed doom for every character. This may be an accurate representation, but it is a singularly dispiriting viewing experience.

A sense of guaranteed doom for every character

Rashad’s previous work includes several short films and the award-winning feature-length documentary Little Eagles. The Settlement’s journey to completion was supported by numerous festivals and funding bodies, including the Berlinale World Cinema Fund. As such, it is likely to find further exposure on the festival circuit following its Berlin Perspectives premiere, although its theatrical prospects may be limited.

Surly, stewing with resentment and clearly not the sharpest tool in the box, Hossam has a permanent chip on his shoulder. His wild behaviour – he disappears from the family home for long stretches, deals drugs and hangs out with disreputable gang members – has earned him a shady reputation. “Normally, you would never be allowed to work here,” says his new boss, having pointedly skipped over the question on the recruitment form about criminal records.

But Hossam seems aggrieved that people think badly of him – he screams at his invalid mother (Hanadi Abdel Khalek), whose medication money he stole, for telling his late father about the theft. The concept of making a bed and then lying in it seems entirely alien to him. He is, it has to be said, an extremely difficult character with whom to sympathise. And Shukry’s unpolished performance doesn’t give Hossam much in the way of depth or texture, so he’s also not particularly interesting as a central figure in the film.

A female co-worker, somewhat inexplicably, takes an interest in Hossam, and calls him anonymously and repeatedly. It’s a device that is presumably intended to hint at a happier future for Hossam, but in practice it serves to make him seem creepy and threatening as he lurks behind bits of heavy machinery, spying on the women in the factory and trying to work out which one is his secret admirer. The central narrative, of a man who has made mistakes but who is trying to turn his life around, is undermined by the fact that Hossam is a thug who makes terrible choices on a daily basis, and who utterly fails to protect his younger brother from harm.

The most successful element of the picture is its vividly evoked sense of place. The neighbourhood where Hossam and his family live is a blighted wasteland, strewn with lumps of concrete and brawling men. And the factory is a cacophonous hell-scape of limb-chewing angle grinders and massive rumbling lathes. Nobody wears eye protection. Watching the slight figure of Maro weaving through the factory floor or Hossam zoning out as his machine judders fitfully is as stressful as any horror movie. The whole factory is an industrial accident waiting to happen – and it doesn’t have to wait too long.