Cairo Streets

There is something about wandering around the city with a camera that brings to mind the figure of the flâneur, although our protagonist is, in truth, in love. And that city is Cairo, with its colours and hand-painted film posters on the doors of cinemas. In one of them, his lover took his hand. Confessing that secret reveals another city in the images. The streets become filled with otherness, charged with tenderness.

Cut to the filmmaker with his low-definition camcorder in front of the mirror. This is a self-portrait in the form of an urban symphony, or a filmed diary of his return to Cairo two decades ago. Of his return to his mother's modest house —whom he listens to and films with devotion— to work on a film shoot by the legendary Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, with whom he forms a beautiful friendship.

His recording allows the invisible sounds, lights, and rhythms of the city to breathe, integrating himself as a voyeur and also as a character, becoming one with the crowd in search of a lover to whom he sends messages on screen and finds in every face, in every body. Scenes from old films on television serve as his soundtrack. They protect him. Chahine says goodbye by blowing a kiss, wishing him luck. Cinema and life continue beyond the credits.

Antonio Miguel Arenas