QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM CANNES
Sandwiched between gang war, menial labour and an ever decreasing social circle, Aisha (Buliana Simon) finds herself at an impasse in life. An ostrich appears in her fantasy, an animal attached to the land like she is. Disrespected at work, she has to tend to an elderly client who expects fellatio after tea. Longing to escape, she is continually reminded of her Somalian heritage, not forgetting her gender. The story is set in present-day Cairo.
Cinematographer Mostafa El Kashef previously worked on The Village Next To Paradise (Mo Harawe, 2024) which explains why Aisha Can’t Fly Away is a handheld, holistic experience reminiscent of a documentary. Like Harawe’s work before it, the characters are in the centre of the frame, regardless of the action around them. In Aisha’s case, she gets caught in gunfire, a firecracker of an action scene that involves a cascade of explosions, debris and ricocheted bullets. Indeed, it’s an incredibly exciting shootout scene, placing the audience headfirst into the carnage,action and adrenaline.
Simon is marvellous in the lead role, an exceptional cocktail of puzzled eyes, glazed lips and stoic concentration, and all from an actress doing it for the first time. The world Morad Mostafa has created is exceedingly male dominated: women line up in queues for the sheckles they are to receive for slaving away at ordinary chores.Aisha has to put up with with slurs relating to the colour of her skin. And when she’s finally invited into a house to clean, she is frequently patronised or oggled. Not a pleasant place to be.
She has one male ally, Abdoun (Emad Ghoniem) a chef who prepares pasta for her during the nighttime.Pressured into cutting off contact with her, the cook articulates her fantasies.In one bizarre segment, giddily pieced together by rapid-cuts, he is seen chopping into the ostrich that follows the protagonist as an invisible companion.
A mélange of genres, Aisha Can’t Fly Away changes into a body horror, as hideous white spots attach themselves to her skin; dots seemingly invisible to everyone else. An evening spent sucking her employer’s penis causes her to become physically ill. She concocts an imaginary future for herself where she cannibalises on the men who mock her so cruelly. Meanwhile there’s the small matter of Zuka (Ziad Zaza), a gang lord who influences the rates of crime in his neighbourhood. He’s the only male who treats Aisha with a scintilla of respect, but is nevertheless keen to use her job as a house cleaner, nurse and sex slave to rob from the domiciles.
Morad is not shy of ambition, effortlessly weaving the work from docudrama to chiller, before pivoting it back to action-oriented cinema. The hurdles are bold, but feed into one another, and the end result is an intoxicating ride into fractured psychoanalysis.Ultimately, the vision belongs to Aisha, and her alone. The deviation from truth to artifice makes sense because it comes from her eyes. Somewhere in the work is a woman searching for redemption, and if cannot come from external forces, it must stem from within.
The streets of the Egyptian capital luxuriate in candour and colour. Rhythm wise, the film speeds along. El Kashef picks up on the grime, dirt and heartbeats that surround the city. Beautifully photographed, the movie makes great use of movement, dragging the camera into the story. By picking up on the character’s emotion, Mostafa and El Kashef add a visceral element to it, making it something of a roller coaster. The viewer is packed into the action, the themes are apparent. The emotion is easy to read off Aisha’s face. Supported by a talented ensemble, Simon shines in a world full of dirt, depravity and degradation.
Aisha Can’t Fly Away just premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 78th Cannes International Film Festival.
