The words “absurdist” and “comedy” are often used together to describe a type of movie that satirises the human condition. Egyptian filmmak...
The words “absurdist” and “comedy” are often used together to describe a type of movie that satirises the human condition. Egyptian filmmaker Omar El Zohairy’s Feathers breaks this pairing and shatters other presumptions along the way.
Zohairy’s Arabic-language feature debut is among the films that will be premiered at the online edition of this year’s Dharamshala International Film Festival (November 4-10). The movie’s premise is ripe for drollery: a brash and boorish man who lords over his wife and three children gets turned into a chicken by a magician.
The spell refuses to break and the magician disappears, leaving the woman with the responsibility of running the household.
Rather than being a send-up, Feathers is a deep dive into the grinding poverty, limited opportunity and overt misogyny in this unidentified corner of Egypt. If G Aravindan’s Kummatty, in which a boy is turned into a dog by a bogeyman, is a realist fairy tale, Feathers moves precisely and decisively in the opposite direction.
Zohairy uses mostly non-professional actors and a filming style dominated by ellipses and very tight frames, some of which slice and dice the human body and the spaces in which it is shot. The off-centre framing, unconventional compositions and desaturated blue-grey-brown palette lend a brittle intimacy and claustrophobia to the...
