FAST FORWARD 2025 / Projections:
11/12/2025 / 20h00 / Montenegrin Cinematheque / Podgorica
Ayman El Amir, Nada Riyadh / Egypt / 2024 / 110’
Directors: Ayman El Amir, Nada Riyadh
Screenplay: Ayman El Amir, Nada Riyadh
Producers: Ayman El Amir, Marilyn Cook, Frank Hoeve, Alessandro Borrelli
Production Companies: Giraffics, Iliade & Films, Astra Film, L’atelier documental
Director of Photography: Mohamed El Seifi
Editing: Ahmed Hafez, Mónica Gil Giraldo
Music: Hesham Nazih
Sound Design: Nagy Essa
Sound Recording: Mostafa Hussein
Country: Egypt
Year: 2024
Runtime: 110’
SYNOPSIS
In a conservative town in southern Egypt, a group of teenage girls decides to defy social expectations and form a street theatre troupe. The film follows their coming of age, intense friendships, losses and small victories, through everyday struggles for freedom of expression and the right to a voice in a community that keeps telling them to be silent. This is an intimate, brave and tender story about art as a space of resistance.
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Ayman El Amir and Nada Riyadh are one of the most recognisable tandems of contemporary Egyptian documentary cinema. Their collaboration is marked by strong social themes, an intimate approach to their protagonists and a deep commitment to stories from marginalised communities. Director and visual artist Nada Riyadh explores women’s experiences, adolescence and identity in conservative environments, while Ayman El Amir is a screenwriter, director and producer known for projects that connect personal stories with the wider socio-political context of the Middle East. Their previous works, including the film Happily Ever After, have screened at numerous international festivals and earned them a reputation as filmmakers who successfully combine documentary precision with emotional and poetic storytelling. The Brink of Dreams represents a high point of their collaboration – a film that opens space for the voices of girls from Upper Egypt and, through the art of street theatre, explores freedom, rebellion and growing up in a society that all too often tries to silence them.
FESTIVALS AND AWARDS
- Cannes Film Festival, 2024 – ACID selection; L’Œil d’Or – Special Mention (special jury recognition for a documentary film)
- Sheffield DocFest, 2024 – International Competition
- DOK Leipzig, 2024 – International Programme
- Sarajevo Film Festival, 2024 – Documentary Competition (regional premiere)