Al Araba El Madfuna II, 2013 ​​​​

Al Araba El Madfuna II, 2013

The script is taken from two short stories by Egyptian writer Mohamed Mostagab (1938–2005), The Offering and Horsemen Adore Perfumes. In The Offering, an entire village loses its ability to speak and, after an initial struggle to find a cure, adapts to survive and prosper by other means. Horsemen Adore Perfumes describes the failed attempts of successive horsemen to overthrow a society’s despotic ruler. Shawky charts these communities’ impulse to use magic, or to rely on a single individual, to achieve new levels of comfort or prosperity.

This film follows on from Al Araba Al Madfuna (2012), which used a different Mostagab story as its script. In both films, shot against rural and historic backdrops in Upper Egypt, children dressed as adults are dubbed with adult voices, recounting the narrative to each other and to the audience in classical Arabic.