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Cairo Streets
It is 2007. Moroccan writer and filmmaker Abdellah Taïa wanders through Cairo. His impatient handycam scans the Egyptian city and captures its people. Film posters line the streets. Television romances populate tea houses and sewing workshops. Sleepy commuters and playing children. His friendship with film legend Youssef Chahine. The jalabiya of Hissine. And that one cinema, where Omar held his hand.
Eighteen years later, Taïa looks back on the memories he and his lost love shared in the city. In his reassembly of the old footage, Cairo is an intimate labyrinth in which to remember and get lost. He searches and longs for Omar in every frame. The way in which Taïa made his footage feels like a bad omen that seemed to seal the melancholic fate of his current quest back then already. Camera movements feel aimless and lost; they never seem quite sure where to look. Their texture is flat and its colours washed out. Through on-screen text addressed to Omar himself, Taïa asks where he is now. “You’ve changed your phone number, Omar. But I have to find you. I love you.”