{"id":759916,"date":"2026-09-04T17:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T17:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/759916\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T17:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T17:00:09","slug":"al-baraneya-review-director-ashgan-el-hamus-impressive-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/759916\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Al Baraneya’ Review: Director Ashgan El-Hamus’ Impressive Debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThere isn\u2019t an iota of artificiality in Ashgan El-Hamus<\/a>\u2019 impressive debut \u201cAl Baraneya<\/a>,\u201d not an easy accomplishment given that it\u2019s fiction looking like a documentary, with a cast almost exclusively composed of relatives. The format translates to an energized intimacy, enhanced by months of workshopping the story together with the one professional actor, Reem Amer, seamlessly inserted in the family bosom. El-Hamus\u2019 achievement however goes beyond method thanks to a story told through moods and textures, of a young pregnant woman in the Egyptian village of Al Baraneya beginning to question the life she\u2019s had plotted out for her. This is the kind of film that seems small only at first glance, building in impact as it plays out, lingering long after the close with images and sounds of the laughter that comes from togetherness.<\/p>\n

\n\tAl Baraneya is an agricultural town at the southern end of the Nile Delta, close in miles to Cairo but psychologically worlds away. Set on the edge of fields planted with jasmine and wheat, it looks like many villages in the area, with plain brick and concrete buildings, the noise and dust of the center belying the greenness just beyond the unregulated constructions. Though this is her extended family\u2019s home, El-Hamus was raised in The Netherlands and her crew are all Dutch, a recipe that could have imposed a level of inauthenticity that is fortunately dodged by the director\u2019s proximity to the cast and an avoidance of any kind of Global North pandering or poverty porn.<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite being married, Amal (Amer) still lives with her parents and siblings while her husband Omar (Mostafa Noureldin) tries to scrape enough money together to build a house for themselves and their baby on the way. Amal\u2019s is a raucous extended family consisting of younger siblings and cousins, presided over by father Sayed (Alsayed Mohamed El-Hamus) and mother Sara (Sara Ali El-Hadary). Before dawn Amal and the girls go into the fields to pick jasmine, which they string onto garlands and peddle at intersections in town. Everyone has a clear role in the family, with only the beloved grandma (Fatma Farahat El-Hadary) freed from the need to contribute financially. Her bed is Amal\u2019s haven after a long day\u2019s work, where the two can joke, watch TV, and relax in unaffected warmth.<\/p>\n

\n\tMoney is tight, the wheat harvest yields less money, and Sayed is being pestered by an outsider to sell his fields. Every offer is firmly rebuffed, and the promise of an easier life, with the possibility of moving to a large apartment near the sea in Alexandria, holds no temptation. For Sayed, it\u2019s not a question of money but of a connection to the land, shared by his entire family: \u201cAre we people of balconies?\u201d asks the mother rhetorically. Life isn\u2019t easy but it\u2019s familiar, and breaking from tradition is an unthinkable leap into the unknown. Amal doesn\u2019t question any of this: She\u2019s awaiting her baby and the moment she and Omar can reproduce the kind of life of their parents and grandparents.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen the family gets a visit from cousin Rania (Salma Khattab), a beautician in Cairo who comes with gifts of clothes and creams and makeup, it opens up a different way of being an Egyptian woman. Following a fight with her mother, Amal secretly takes a bus into the city to see Rania, who offers sympathy together with a glimpse of independence \u2014 there\u2019s a terrific scene where the two make a TikTok video in an open studio in a shopping mall, their expression of freedom, unbeholden to more conservative social norms, acting as a conduit towards questioning the life path of a young married woman in rural Cairo.<\/p>\n

\n\tNot that El-Hamus looks down upon the choices made by the characters in Al Baraneya. The pull of family security, notwithstanding financial precarity, is palpable, and one of the film\u2019s strengths is the way it conveys a joyous connection between the women of the family. (There\u2019s little interaction between brothers and sisters, father and daughters.) \u201cIf you think they\u2019re happy, you\u2019re wrong,\u201d says grandma to Amal as they watch a soap opera showing rich and glamorous women, and she\u2019s right. But for Amal, a new way of thinking about her future is dawning, and with it, potential dissatisfaction with what previously had been her set role in life.<\/p>\n

\n\tEconomic difficulties, tradition resisting a changing world (not necessarily for the better), and new-found opportunities all enter into the mix in an organic way, spun out through the family\u2019s natural interactions. Despite knowing this isn\u2019t a documentary, it still takes some time to sink in that this is fiction, given how embedded it is within family life: It\u2019s even more impressive that a Dutch DP, Douwe Hennink, was so accepted within their midst. Edited without a hint of didacticism, and privileging the family\u2019s tight-knit rapport, \u201cAl Baraneya\u201d is a rare transnational production that doesn\u2019t feel designed solely for European-American consumption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There isn\u2019t an iota of artificiality in Ashgan El-Hamus\u2019 impressive debut \u201cAl Baraneya,\u201d not an easy accomplishment given…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":759917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[250953,250954,96,2839,56,54,55,10306],"class_list":["post-759916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-al-baraneya","tag-ashgan-el-hamus","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/759917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}