In the Last Days of the City

This intrigu­ing film offers a patch­work of city life in Cairo before the rev­o­lu­tion. Del­i­cate­ly shot pro­jec­tions fil­ter into a stream of exquis­ite imagery. In the Last Days of the City is a con­vinc­ing, doc­u­men­tary-style dra­ma with a nar­ra­tive that comes sec­ond to its sense of visu­al poet­ry. Direc­tor Tamer El Said assem­bles a wealth of vibrant footage and strik­ing stills of the city he grew up in, and cre­ates a mul­ti-tex­tured film, tense with antic­i­pa­tion and restlessness.

The sto­ry fol­lows Khalid, a young film­mak­er liv­ing in Egypt­ian cap­i­tal and intent on mak­ing a movie despite hav­ing no clear direc­tion or nar­ra­tive. There is a care­ful lay­er­ing of nuance – El Said’s film reflects his cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty, express­ing sen­ti­ment and inten­si­ty with­out ever being too clear cut.

Khalid meets with his friends and pro­fes­sion­al col­leagues, now liv­ing in Bagh­dad, Beirut and Berlin. He dis­cuss­es their expe­ri­ences of these diverse cities with great pas­sion and intrigue. One of the film’s themes is the obses­sion to uncov­er­ing truth using the eye of the cam­era. El Said strips back real­i­ty, rely­ing on the authen­tic depic­tions of the urban envi­ron­ment rather than a con­trived and manip­u­lat­ed ver­sion which repli­cates the pres­ence of being. His film deals in the momen­tary and the intangible.

The city itself feels like a pro­tag­o­nist, and the film engages with it through a mix­ture of care­ful­ly direct­ed and more ver­ité, hand-held footage, some­times shot by the char­ac­ters them­selves. The cam­era locates a raw­ness in the chaos of the land­scape that Khalid and his friends talk about with a mix­ture won­der and fear. Through shots of a build­ing being dis­man­tled, or a man undress­ing a man­nequin in his shop win­dow, there is some­thing inde­scrib­able, maybe even tran­scen­dent, that res­onates on a deep­er emo­tion­al level.

The film is a chal­leng­ing watch, and it’s hard to amply describe its plea­sures in words – its poignan­cy is in a deep affil­i­a­tion with the life of a crum­bling urban cen­tre, cap­tured in a bit­ter­sweet tapes­try of images that search for a soul with­out ever quite cap­tur­ing it.