• Sat 24 09 2016 •
In the Last Days of the City Tamer El Said

19:15

Tamer El Said, The Last Days of the City, 119′, Egypt, Germany, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates 2016, color, Arabic with English subs, DCP

Venue: Filmforum at the Museum Ludwig, Bischofsgartenstraße 1, 50667 Cologne
7 € / 5 € reduced
Ensuing talk in German

An event by FilmInitiativ Köln in the context of the 14th African Film Festival Cologne (15–25 9 / films-from-africa.com) and the Academy of the Arts of the World in cooperation with the Deutsch-Ägyptische Gesellschaft e.V.

When Egypt was on the cusp of revolution five years ago, Tharir Square became the icon of the Arab Spring and of its tragic endings. Tamer El Said’s In the Last Days of the City is a swan song to Cairo as it was in the run-up to those historical events, shot between 2007 and 2011. It tells the story of Khalid, a young filmmaker who has to change apartments at the worst possible time. His mother is dying, his girlfriend is leaving, and he is making a documentary whose direction he cannot decide. As he visits apartment after apartment and converses with three filmmaker friends from Beirut, Baghdad and Berlin, it becomes clear that In the Last Days of the City is a film about film. Its chief protagonist is Downtown Cairo itself, in all its jubilant noisiness and neglected grandeur, which now, too, is undergoing gentrification as Egypt returns to “normal” under military rule. The screening is followed by a conversation between Tamer El Said and film curator STEPHANIE SCHULTE STRATHAUS on the impact of the 2011 events on the film’s production and editing.

Tamer El Said realized several documentaries and short fiction films and in 2007 founded the independent film production company Zero Production in Cairo. He is also one of the founders of the Cimatheque – Alternative Film Centre in Egypt. He lives in Cairo. In the Last Days of the City is his first feature-length fiction film.