Microphone

The prospect of an exciting new voice in filmmaking emerged at last year’s Festival when Ahmad Abdalla’s debut feature Heliopolis met with ecstatic reviews. His latest film, Microphone, establishes Abdalla as both a visionary and a promising auteur. Moulding elements of cinéma vérité into stylized cinematography, a striking counterbalance of looseness and composition further highlights the dense city backdrop of Alexandria, Egypt.

Upon returning to his native Alexandria after travelling abroad in the United States for several years, Khaled (Khaled Abol Naga) discovers that time has altered and severed many of his prior relationships, namely between he and his former flame, Hadeer (Menna Shalabi). Feeling alone and dejected, Khaled wanders the city and quickly stumbles into a new world: the underground arts scene. As he becomes increasingly enchanted with this counterculture movement, Khaled crosses paths with street hip-hoppers, rooftop rockers, graffiti artists and documentary filmmakers. Captivated by this diverse intersection of creativity, he attempts to pull together his limited resources in the hopes of supporting the onslaught of fresh talent. It is not long before his professional and personal life become completely immersed in music, film and art, a movement all the more extraordinary for it having not emerged from Cairo, Egypt’s bustling capital city.

In addition to stringing together vibrant characters and locales, Microphone is a rich depiction of some of the most exceptional non-professional musicians the city has to offer. Just as dazzling as the music they create, their performances come to life in the film’s myriad sequences of action shots. Abdalla overcomes the difficult task of juggling differing aesthetics and disciplines, and the outcome is a dynamic yet self-effacing travelogue that makes viewers feel as though they are right in the middle of the excitement. –TIFF