As well as being subtle, tender and sad, this feature from Egyptian director Ayten Amin is one of those rare films which really engages with online existence and social media – yet without needing to flash up tweets and texts as onscreen graphics in the way most movies do. Souad meditates on the mysterious discrepancy between the image we project on social media and the reality behind it, and also how this discrepancy itself can be corrosive. And it also reflects on the eerie afterlife of a dead person’s Facebook page – like Jean Cocteau’s remark about a writer’s work carrying on like a ticking wristwatch on a dead soldier.
In a small town called Zagazig on Egypt’s eastern Nile delta, Souad (Bassant Ahmed) is a bright 19-year-old student who burnishes her vivacious image on social media. In a rather brilliant opening scene, we see her on a bus showing a picture on her phone to the old lady sitting next to her, and telling her how this is her fiance Ahmed and she herself is a medical student. Then in the next scene we see her showing this same picture to someone else and spinning a completely different story: she is trying out different images, different identities and existences; digital media is making this possible. Because the reality is she has never actually met Ahmed – despite secretly calling him, sexting him, leaving tempestuous voice memos, breaking up, making up.
Meanwhile Ahmed (Hussein Ghanem) lives far away in Alexandria; he is a much older guy – older than...
Read Full Story: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/aug/26/souad-review-ayten-amin
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