A powerful account of life in contemporary Cairo. This raw drama about a pair of star-crossed lovers shines a spotlight upon the social and cultural taboos that riddle the city’s diverse population. Heralding a bold new shift for contemporary Egyptian cinema, Cairo Exit is a gritty and uncompromising work from a major new cinematic talent.

Amal Iskander is an 18-year-old Coptic girl, living in Bashtel, in the slums of Cairo. Her Muslim boyfriend Tarek is planning to leave Egypt on an illegal boat-crossing to Italy. Amal tells Tarek she is pregnant but he gives her an ultimatum – abandon the country with him, or have an abortion. Despite her love for Tarek, Amal rejects both choices.

Amal cannot bear to consider the future she faces as a poor woman in Egypt, reflected in the lives of her sister and best friend: one makes grave sacrifices so her son can have a better life, while the other prepares for a surgery to feign her virginity so she can enter into a loveless marriage to an older, wealthy foreigner.

But when Amal is fired from her job her already-precarious future looks bleak. In desperation, she takes a low-paid job as a hairdresser, a job which leads her into a seedy underworld of crime and vice. Is it too late for Amal to escape the sordid, dead-end world of exploitation and misery in Cairo’s darkest corners? Even as Amal actively seeks out opportunities for self-sufficiency, it is ultimately fate that will determine her path.

FESTIVALS

• Dubai International Film Festival, 2010
• Tribeca Film Festival, 2011
• Amsterdam Arab Film Festival, 2011

Watch the trailer