El Medina

Decentering/City: “You won’t find a new country, you don’t discover new shores. The city will follow you. Wherever you go, you’ll arrive in this city.” The lines from the Konstantin Kavafis poem that precede the film are also its leitmotif. When Ali turns his back on his home city of Cairo and his family obligations to become an actor in Paris, he also experiences the idea that leaving is just an illusion, a promise that loses its magic all too quickly. Two years after his arrival in the French capital, he is one of the many thousands “sans papiers” and living there illegally. He tries to make ends meet with occasional jobs and dangerous boxing matches. In somber images shot on celluloid and DV, Nasrallah creates a parable on leaving and coming back.